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Theistic Evolution 


cd 7 
ALFRED FAIRHURST, A. M., D. Sci. 
Author of 


“Organic Evolution Considered,” Etec. 


ap 


CINCINNATI 
THE STANDARD PUBLISHING COMPANY 


Copyright, 1919 
The Standard Publishing Company 


To my wife 
ELIZABETH HOLMAN FAIRHURST 


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CONTENTS 


PAGE 
Tieston Twi aL ace WG 1c eee cm cee ema AR ema eR at atic A Sey Nacsa 7 
1s 
Gop’s METHOD OF .~WORKING 3.20 9 
II. 

TOT ETO Nias on a en es eee 36 
III. 

STE LUVOTATTION: Ce ee ee Pies ee 58 
TVs 

EVOLUTION AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS o.ccescsscccssssnsssssssesseeee 59 
V. 

Pe OPTTIR AT Cate] OCP CLO be es ee ee a eee 84 
VI. 

are TOT Sat ek ee ed 95 
VII. 

for) re OD Bearman eS MO Lae OR Ee a RIESE Read Ot al SO cea Re 112 


CONTENTS 





VIII. 
GOD FINS THE “WORLD (oe et ores irs Nes er ae Steere 
LX: 
DITRA OTS: over oe CeBIT Merete hen Sis oo FAME penne | nee 148 
X. 


Tee METHOD OF SVOLUTION i eee ee SRLS 


INTRODUCTION 


HAVE in the present volume emphasized certain 

things to which I think ministers and teachers ought 
to give the most thoughtful consideration. I hold that 
theistic evolution destroys the Bible as the inspired 
book of authority as effectually as does atheistic evolu- 
tion. To this fact I wish to call the special attention 
of those who accept the Bible as the one book of 
authority in religion. 

Theistic cosmic evolution, it is claimed, is the 
process by which God does all things, so that every 
event is a part of the process of evolution. It is evi- 
dent that a miracle can not be a part of the continuous, 
unbroken process of evolution, and that the miracles 
of the Bible are entirely outside of the process. 

The attitude of evolutionists at present is that 
evolution is a fact. Some claim that it has passed be- 
yond the stage of theory and that it is established 
science. With most of them the question as to its being 
a fact is no longer debatable, and so the teachers in the 
various schools and higher institutions of learning sim- 
ply assume it to be a fact, and thus they are relieved 
of trying to teach the method of evolution. But method 
has been the great question which evolutionists have 
tried to establish. ‘‘Natural Selection’? was Darwin’s 
great contribution to method. This theory has, how- 
ever, been largely discarded by evolutionists. There is 
no agreement whatever among them as to method. 
They are disposed to be silent on this subject. 

7 


INTRODUCTION 





It is conceivable that evolution might be a fact 
and that at the same time we might be ignorant of the 
method. I hold that we do not know it to be a fact, 
and that we are entirely ignorant of any methods by 
which it may be established as a fact. It is only a 
theory. 

From the present attitude of accepting it as a fact 
it is necessarily taught dogmatically, the result being 
a large crop of dogmatists, who know practically noth- 
ing of the subject. And yet this theory is spoken of 
as valuable science and is being so taught. : 

I hold that it ought not to be taught as a fact in any 
school, and that when evolution is considered, the 
method ought: to be considered in detail. The present 
method of teaching it is harmful and misleading. 

There is no good reason why the theory of evolution 
should be presented to pupils in primary and secondary 
schools. Its consideration should be left to the higher 
classes in college, and the facts bearing on it, pro and 
con, should be fully considered when taught. 

I am convinced that the subject of evolution ought 
to be eliminated from the primary and _ secondary 
schools, by law, if necessary. In these schools the im- 
maturity of the pupils and the incompetency of the 
teachers render the subject highly unprofitable. 

I feel assured that if cosmic theistic evolution is 
accepted and pushed to its logical results, the Bible as 
the inspired book of authority in religion will be elimi- 
nated. This matter is fundamental in the moral and 
religious life of the world. ALFRED F‘AIRHURST. 

LEXINGTON, Ky., Jan. 17, 1919. 


I 
GOD’S METHOD OF WORKING 


PREPARATION OF THE EARTH FOR THE First Livine 
THINGS. 


OD has worked through all the ages and is work- 
ing now. He is the author of all things on earth 
—matter, force and mind. 

My purpose is to state, as far as I can, what has 
taken place in the history of the earth—to state known 
facts from which legitimate conclusions can be drawn. 

As to matter: Something less than one hundred 
kinds of simple substances are known. A simple sub- 
stance can not be separated into two or more kinds of 
matter. A few simple substances make up most of the 
known part of the earth. 

Matter has weight and inertia. It maintains its 
state of motion or rest unless acted on by some external 
force. 

As to force: Some of the forces of nature in the 
inorganic world are light, heat, electricity and chemism. 
Forces in action put matter in motion. Without the 
action of force, matter would remain in a fixed posi- 
tion. Potential energy, energy stored up, does not give 
mass motion. 

Gravity acts on all matter at all distances. Its 
stress is inversely as the square of the distance of 

9 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


bodies from each other and directly as the product of 
the masses, 

Chemism is the force which causes simple substances 
to combine to form compounds. It acts at insensible 
distances only. 

Light, heat and electricity depend for transmission 
or the hypothetical ether as a medium, which ether 
fills all space except that which matter occupies. Heat 
and electricity are also subject to conduction. 

A most important fact is that each of the above- 
named forces may be converted into all of the others, 
so it may be that there is but one essential force in the 
inorganic world. 

The living world also includes life, feelings, in- 
stincts and mind, which have been most important fac- 
tors in producing changes during the earth’s history. 
These, as modifying agents, can not be included among 
the forces of the inorganic world. 

We start with the idea that the earth, with all of 
its forces and agencies, is the work of God. 

As a scientific problem, however, we refer all 
changes that have taken place, and that are continually 
taking place, immediately to the forces that manifest 
themselves in and through matter. The possibility of 
the physical sciences rests on this fact. 

The history of the earth extends over millions of 
years, during which time, at every moment, innumer- 
able changes have taken place. 

It is established science that the history of the 
earth extends over millions of years. There seems to 
be no doubt that the earth was once melted, and that, 
possibly, its elements were in a gaseous condition. In 
that condition the elements, owing to the intense heat, 

10 


GOD’S METHOD OF WORKING 





would have been separated from each other. The earth 
has been a cooling body for millions of years. This 
means that it was giving off more heat than it received. 
During the process of cooling, the elements, which had 
been kept apart by the intense heat, united with each 
other to form compounds. These compounds constitute 
the crust of the earth and the great mass of the water 
in the oceans and elsewhere. The principal part of the 
earth’s crust is made up of silica, silicates and carbon- 
ates. Oxides, sulphides, chlorides, sulphates and 
nitrates, and various free metals, such as gold, silver, 
copper and platinum, are among the common minerals. 

Most of the minerals that form the earth’s crust 
have been oxidized, and are very insoluble in water, 
thus giving stability to the crust. The chemical forces 
have done most that they can do in modifying the 
crust of the earth, so that the crust is in comparative 
chemical equilibrium, but everywhere these forces are 
more or less active, and on this perpetual activity 
depends largely the fertility of the soil. 

The earth, from the time it was a gaseous or a 
molten mass, has, so far as its energy has been con- 
cerned, been a dying world. Its changes have been 
the radiation of a vast amount of heat into space, the 
formation of a great number of chemical compounds, 
and the changes in the earth’s crust due to the action 
of the force of gravity. Thus the loss of heat, chemism 
and gravity had most to de immediately in preparing 
the earth for the first living thing. The preparation of 
the earth to support living organisms demanded the 
exercise of no forces other than the inorganic forces of 
nature. Through the immense time during which these 
physical changes were taking place no unbroken con- 

“a zt 


cpt OS 
gust 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 
ei aN oe ep et 


tinuity can be discovered. The word ‘‘evolution’’ can 
not be applied to these chemical and mechanical 
changes in the sense in which it must be used when 
applied to the organic world. 


OricIn oF Livinc THINGS ON THE EARTH. 


The advent of life into the world marked a new and 
most important era in its history. There seems to be 
a great gulf fixed between the living and the dead. 
The forces that were at work rendering the earth habit- 
able by living beings were those of inorganic nature. 
From a scientific point of view the first living thing on 
the earth had no ancestor except the different kinds of 
necessary matter and the forces that had been at work 
on them through the long ages. As a scientific prob- 
lem, spontaneous generation had to take place. It igs 
evident that the preparation of the world for life must 
be included as a part of the process of evolution, and 
that evolution must account for life as a part of its 
process. It must lift the dead into the living—a process 
which no evolutionist has ever been able to explain. It 
lies at the threshold of organic evolution. The evolu- 
tionist is not at liberty to thrust it aside. It is his 
legitimate problem. If evolution preceded the first 
living thing and if it has prevailed ever since life was 
first introduced, it must include the origin of the 
primordial organism. If evolution is the universal 
scientific process that it is claimed to be, it can not 
eliminate any necessary link in the unbroken chain of 


_ its process. 


Scientific men admit that there is no scientific evi- 
dence to prove the fact of spontaneous generation. 
Darwin said that ‘‘the inquiry as to how life first 

12 


GOD’S METHOD OF WORKING 





originated_is hopeless.’’ He is the father of modern 
evolution. 

EK. D. Cope says: ‘‘Failure of the attempts to dem- 
onstrate spontaneous generation will prove, if con- 
tinued, fatal to this theory. With our present evidence, 
it may be affirmed that not only has life preceded 
organization, but that consciousness was coincident with 
the dawn of life.’’ 

Tyndall, having performed nearly a thousand ex- 
periments bearing on spontaneous generation, con- 
cluded that, so far as the experiments showed anything, 
it was that a living organism must have a living parent - 
for its production. 

The scientific solution of the problem of spontaneous 
generation is evidently hopeless. Cope says that the 
“‘failure, if continued, will prove fatal to this theory’’ 
(evolution). 

From a chemical point of view the theory seems 
hopeless. A vast number of chemical compounds are 
formed by living plants alone. The inorganic world of 
dead matter and force can not manufacture these com- 
pounds. The inorganic world, guided by the mind of 
man, has produced a few of the compounds that plants 
manufacture. But plants have a corner on methods. 
Man’s methods in the laboratory are entirely different 
from those used by plants. The life of the_plant, using 
maiter and force of the inorganic world, does vastly 
more than can be wrought by these agencies when 
guided by human powers. 

Every living thing contains, as a necessary part of 
its body, protoplasm, which is regarded as the essen- 
tial living substance. There is no hope that it can ever’ 
be made artificially from the inorganic elements. But 

13 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





this must be done, if in any way inorganic chemistry 
would serve the cause of spontaneous generation. 

Cope says that ‘‘facts and logic do not support the 
derivation of the anagenetic from the inorganic ener- 
gies.’’ He also says that ‘‘purely chemical phenomena 
in both organic and inorganic processes are degener- 
ate.’’ That they are so, is shown by the fact that most 
chemical actions are accompanied by the emission of 
heat—the loss of energy. The tendency in the inor- 
ganic chemical world is to form more stable compounds, 
accompanied by the loss of energy. 

There is no way in which energy can be stored up 
in large quantities by the inorganic world. The agency 
of living plants alone, when acted upon by the sun- 
shine, can store up energy. Hence, the anagenetic ener- 
gies due to life prevail. When the plant dies, its com- 
plex chemical substances, woody fiber, protoplasm, ete., 
decompose and pass into simpler and more stable 
forms, which serve as plant food again. In this retro- 
grade movement the catagenetic forces prevail. Exclud- 
ing living things, the course of nature is downward, is 
catagenetic. 

Here, then, we see two general tendencies among 
the forces of nature. In the inorganic world they are 


. always catagenetic, and these forces without life can 
not contribute to the anagenetic forces in living beings. 


In other words, catagenetic forces alone could not pro- 
duce a living thing—could not bring about spontaneous 
generation. 


THE PLANT CONSTRUCTIVE. 


The plant alone manufactures complex organic com- 
pounds from the mineral world. It may be compared 
14 


\ 
\ 


GOD’S METHOD OF WORKING 
Reem ERT Gn ALINE HUF IID ODA BNIR Se aia SMe ee oars Ronen 


to a storage battery. Most of the kinetic energy that 
the majority of the higher plants receive from the sun 
is stored up as potential energy in the form of woody 
fiber. This energy has been conserved in large quantity 
in the form of coal. In other cases it is stored as poten- 
tial energy in seeds, which becomes anagenetic energy 
during the growth of the plant from the seed. This 
energy is stored largely as the complex gluten, starch, 
sugar and other organic compounds that compose most 
of the weight of the seed, so that the energy of early 
growth comes mostly from organic compounds. 

The food in the seed having been exhausted, the 
higher plants depend exclusively on inorganic foods for 
their growth. Water, carbon dioxide, ammonium com- 
pounds and nitrates, all of which are comparatively 
simple, are among the most important foods which 
plants require. 

Animals can not live on inorganic foods alone. They 


an not convert the food of plants into the tissues of 


animals. They can convert the gluten and other pro- 
teins which plants have manufactured into muscular ~ 
tissue and other protoplasmic tissues of the body ; and, 
also, starch, sugar and some other foods that plants 
produce, into fats and oils that exist in the bodies of 
animals. The energy stored up in animals is furnished 
ultimately almost exclusively by plants. 


THE AnimAu Is Destructive. 


The animal is generally much more destructive in 
performing its functions than is the plant. It contin- 
ually parts with its energy and destroys its tissues in 
doing its work. Ti has been truthfully said that living 
is a dying process. Animal tissues are built up mostly 

2 15 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





that they may be destroyed by use. If the building 
and repair of tissues exceed the waste, the animal in- 
creases in size and strength; while if waste of tissue 
and energy is in excess, death and dissolution soon 
overtake the animal. The anagenetic forces of life and 
the catagenetic forces of death are ever struggling in 
the animal organism. 


THe CONSTRUCTIVE WoRK OF ANIMALS DEPENDS ON 
PLANTS. 


The body of the animal is composed of many highly 
organized tissues, manufactured mostly from organic 
foods which plants have furnished. The tissues of the 
animal have not been manufactured by the plant—the 
life forces in the animal alone can construct its many 
peculiar tissues. In aadition to the more or less solid 
tissues of the animal, there are many peculiar organic 
substances in the body of the animal which are neces- 
sary for the performance of its complex functions. 

When we add to the organism of the animal the 
various psychic functions that exist in the animal king- 
dom, we see that the gulf between this and the vegetable 
kingdom is greatly deepened and widened. It is evident \ 
that the animal, because of its structure and its func- | 
tions, belongs to a kingdom vastly superior to that of — 
plants. 

If matter and the ordinary forees of nature alone 
can not account for the origin of the plant, much less 
ean they account for the origin of the animal. It re- 
quires inorganic matter and force, plus the life of the 
plant, plus the life of the animal, to account for the 
animal, and in the case of man to the above things must 
be added a free dominant spirit, with its multitude of 

16 


GOD’S METHOD OF WORKING 
— — 


powers, which controls the forces of nature in such a - 
way as to modify, beautify and render fruitful the 
whole world for the benefit of man. 


Upwarp Steps In CREATION. 


Looking at the organic world, we see a series of 
great upward steps. From the inorganic world we 
ascend to the vegetable, which is destitute of conscious 
feeling, then upward to the animal world, throughout 
most of which, at least, exists conscious feeling, and to 
this are added the various special senses—sight, smell, 
taste, hearing and others; also the instincts, and, finally, 
the mind of man. 

The creation of the practically infinite number of 
species in this organic world, with their endless varie- 
ties of structure and function, the evolutionist would 
explain by the use of the word ‘‘evolution.’’ It is 
evident that when he uses the word in this way he 
uses it in a different sense, so far as the forces involved 
are concerned, from that in which he applied it to the 
imorganic world when it was being prepared for living 
things. In the latter case the forces were catagenetic 
—away from life—as they always are in the inorganic 
world. It is only when the anagenetic—the life forces 
—come into action in plants and animals, that the 
upward movement against the destructive forces can 
take place. But this upward movement soon ceases in 
individuals. The battle between the forces of life and 
those of death soon ends in the victory of the latter. 
Certainly the forces of death can not be the sole causes 
of the existence of life. 

Life moves up-stream against constant pressure. It 
moves against the ever-present, destructive, disintegrat- 

17 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





ing forces that would sweep it backward until, finally, 
the living forces of the individual are exhausted. If 
the downward forces are to be regarded as evolution, is 
it proper to apply this word to the upward forces? It 
is evident, I think, that the downward forces are not 
the sum total of the forces involved in the organic 
world. 


DARWIN Becins Lire witH A MIRACLE. 


Darwin speaks about ‘‘life with its several powers 
having been originally breathed by the Creator into a 
few forms or into one.’’ He introduces a miracle with 
which to start, but after that he excludes all miracles, 
by the naturalistic process of evolution. If he is obliged 
to admit a miracle to begin life, then miracles are not 
excluded by the nature of things. He is obliged to 
accept a miracle as the foundation of the theory of 
evolution which absolutely excludes miracles. Here, 
then, are two things, diametrically opposed, that Mr. 
Darwin felt obliged to accept. But if, during the evo- 
lution of the earth, it came to pass that the Creator 
must perform a miracle to introduce life, why not 
more? Why not logical to create animals by miracles, 
and the various psychic powers, including the mind of 
man? If possible, it would seem that there is a greater 
gulf between the human mind and any power below it, 
-than between the first simple organism and the inor- 
ganic world. But the theory of evolution must not 
grant this, for it would be accepting a miracle. Mr. 
Darwin, having granted a miracle as his necessary 
starting-point, has mounted evolution, as the steed 
which is to carry him up the ascending ‘mountainous 
road by way of evolution, has made him mount the 

18 


GOD’S METHOD OF WORKING 





steeps and leap the wide chasms that lay in his way, 
until, at the close of the route, both rider and horse 
remind one of death’s skeleton spurring on his bony 


steed. 

In the ‘‘Origin of Species’’ (p. 482), Mr. Darwin 
says: ‘‘I believe that animals are descended from at 
most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an 
equal or lesser number.’’ He has already stated that 
life was ‘‘originally breathed by the Creator into a few 
forms or into one.’’ His real belief, however, was that 
the Creator breathed into from seven to ten different 
forms, that they might become the progenitors of plants 
and animals. These different forms for different pur- 
poses demanded separate miracles, thus increasing the 
difficulties of evolution, and rendering it more probable 
that the Creator might perform subsequent miracles. 

The fact that quite a number of forms were created 
as a beginning for the organic world indicated that 
the Creator did this with a view as to the future, exer- 
cising a discriminating and prophetic and creative 
power as to the future outcome. Take, for example, 
the simple cell or structure that was the egg from 
which, by evolution, all the species of vertebrates would 
finally descend—what an immense, unimaginable poten- 
tiality it contained. The egg of a single mammal which 
develops into a highly organized living, active being is — 
beyond our ken; how infinitely more wonderful was 
that primordial egg which, through successive genera- 
tions, by the continuous process of evolution, could give 
rise to the tens of thousands of vertebrate species, in- 
eluding man with his dominating mind. 

The creation of the several original forms, with 
their untold powers of development, as claimed by Mr. 

19 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





Darwin, was the greatest of all miracles. The man who 
can accept that ought to have no difficulty in believing 
the miracles of the Bible, for they are mere pigmies 
compared to the first Darwinian miracles of creation. 

The derivation of a living thing from a living par- 
ent is the limit of human experience. We constantly 
assume that the living thing that we see had a living 
parent. This method, strictly applied, would lead to an 
endless series of living organisms in the past. But we 
know absolutely that there was a first living thing that 
had no living parent. At this point the method 
changed, and essentially—so far as nature shows—the 
living was derived from the dead and not from the 
living. Human experience, at most, stops short as we 
move backward to where life ends in the inorganic 
world. 


Must ASSUME THE EXISTENCE OF A Power THAT CAN 
Ruue Force In INORGANIC WORLD. 


If, as already shown, the catagenetic forces could 
‘not create life, it becomes necessary to assume the 
action of a higher power than these forces, that could 
ereate the living. This, Mr. Darwin admits by refer- 
ring the origin of the first living things to the Creator. 
Let it be remembered that by doing this he has opened 
up the way to an indefinite number of miracles by the 
Creator, wherever along the line of creation the exist- 
ing forces would not account for the changes. Le Conte 
says that ‘‘the passage from one plane upward to an- 
other is not a gradual passage by a sliding scale, but 
at one bound.’’ 

As we move upward in the scale of creation, the 
difficulties increase more and more. All animals have 

20 


GOD’S METHOD OF WORKING 





some kind of feeling. How, by the strictly scientific 
method, which evolution claims as its own, can we ex- 
plain the existence of feeling? Matter, motion and 
force fail to explain the life of the plant; how can 
they account for feeling—a function above that of 
plants? How account for the feeling of touch, of pain, 
the sense of warmth, the desire for food, and many 
other sensations ? 


Mrracues NEEDED To ACCOUNT FoR PsycHic WORLD. 


If various miracles were needed to create the first 
living things as a starting-point for organic evolution, 
would not some additional miracles be needed to create 
the various powers of sensation? Herbert Spencer. 
says: ‘‘That a unit of feeling has nothing in common 
with a unit of motion, becomes more than ever mani- 
fest when we bring the two into juxtaposition.’’ In 
other words, feeling of any kind can not be derived 
from molecular motion, which is its only scientific basis. 

If we consider the many and diversified instincts in 
the animal kingdom which have originated separately 
in the thousands of species, we would be unable to 
account for their origin by any plausible naturalistic 
theory. In ‘‘Organic Evolution Considered’’ I have 
dealt with a few instincts. I have there given consider- 
able attention to the numerous and complicated in- 
stinects of the honey-bee. I have endeavored to show 
that these wonderful instincts, which belong mostly to 
the workers, which are neuters, could not have arisen 
by inheritance, nor could one instinct have given rise 
to another. And all of these instincts exist to perfec- 
tion and must exist together, in order that the hive 
may do its work. Pure science is unable to account 

21 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





for these powers. While the materials and the forces 
of inorganic nature are involved in all living things, 
they can not give rise to any psychic function, and 
least of all to those of a high order. 


ORGANS OF SPECIAL SENSES. 


The scientific theory of evolution furnishes no ade- 
quate explanation of the origin of the special senses, 
with their various organs. It is indeed surprising that 
so many kinds of eyes, both simple and compound, are 
found among animals. Many of them are simple and 
many of them are compound, and some of the latter 
have thousands of facets. Darwin says that ‘‘ Miller 
formerly made three classes of compound eyes, with 
seven subdivisions, besides a fourth main class of aggre- 
gated simple eyes.’’ Sometimes an animal has both 
simple and compound eyes. Simple eyes, while gener- 
ally on the head, are located in other cases on various 
parts of the bodies of animals that have no heads. 

Eyes —It is evident that the many eyes of many 
kinds have not had a common origin by evolution. 
Their existence denotes either many separate evolu- 
tions or many separate creations. If the former, then 
the evolution of eyes has been one of the commonest 
things in nature. That eyes could have been sepa- 
rately evolved so many times, greatly multiplies the 
difficulties involved. If eyes, as has been claimed, 
started from pigment spots fortuitously evolved, such 
spots must have frequently appeared on various parts 
ot the bodies of animals that have heads, and eyes 
ought to have been developed from these spots. Instead 
of this, however, eyes are not thus being developed. 
Besides, there is no reason why such fortuitous spots 

22 


GOD’S METHOD OF WORKING 





should not continue to appear on many of these animals 
and be at least partly developed eyes at present. There 
is no reason why an eye could be preserved through its 
rudimentary stages for many generations till it became 
an organ of vision. The Darwinian theory is that a 
structure is preserved because it is useful, but no use 
as an eye could exist for a long period. If it could 
serve as a heat spot, this would not render it an ‘‘eye- 
spot,’’ and calling it an ‘‘eye-spot’’ is misleading. 

Darwin, speaking of the eyes of vertebrates, says: 
‘‘Tt is indeed indispensable, in order to arrive at a just 
conclusion regarding the formation of the eye, with all 
its marvelously perfect chapters, that the reason should 
conquer the imagination; but I have felt this difficulty 
far too keenly to be surprised at any degree of hesita- 
tion in extending the principle of natural selection to 
so startling a degree.’’ He admits that his theory is 
‘‘startling’’ when trying to account for the perfect 
eye. But why appeal to reason to conquer? The facts 
on which reason can build are absent. To accept the 
theory would be purely on the authority of the imagi- 
nation. It seems to me that the creation of the eye was 
a good place for Darwin to attribute to the Creator the 
performance of miracles, as he did to explain the origin 
of the first living things. To accept the evolution of 
eyes, not only of one kind, but of many kinds, seems 
to be the height of mental credulity. 

Sight is the supreme sense, by the exercise of which 
our ideas of form and color and of all relations in 
space are determined. The eye can form images by the 
use of the light that has traveled for thousands of 
years from the distant stars. But the light has not 
made the eye; it only enables the eye to perform the 

23 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





functions for which it has been adapted. The eye is 
shaped and perfected in the darkness of the egg, or, in 
ease of the mammals, in the absolute darkness of the 
mother’s womb. Everything is produced ‘‘after its 
kind.’’ That an eye might lose its power by failure to 
use it, does not prove that light can give rise to an 
organ of sight. 

EKars.—If we consider the evolution of other organs, 
we meet with similar difficulties. Various kinds of 
organs of hearing located in different parts of the body 
exist in animals; at the base of the foot in clams, in the 
fore legs in some grasshoppers, in the sides of the 
abdomen in others, in the wing in many insects, and at 
the base of the antennex in crabs and lobsters. These 
different ears located in various places could not have 
had a common origin. Besides, the ears of vertebrates, 
with their very complex structure, demand still another 
origin. The separate creations of many organs to serve 
a similar purpose greatly complicate the difficulties of 
evolution. We can appeal to imagination only in try- 
ing to account for the preservation of the various kinds 
of auditory organs during many generations, through 
their useless incipient stages. Truly, this theory stag- 
gers not at any assumption. It says that it has had to 
happen by evolution, and, therefore, it did happen. It 
cuts the Gordian knot and makes the assumption in 
the name of science! 

Breathing Apparatus.——All animals must use free 
oxygen. Some obtain it from solution in water, others 
from the air. Many ‘‘water-breathers’’ absorb it 
through the general surface of the body; some have 
tufts that serve as gills, others have flat gills at the 
sides of the body; others, gills located ‘‘in cavities 

24 


GOD’S METHOD OF WORKING 





covered by the sides of the shell’’; still others. flat, 
fringed gills like those of most fishes, or pouch-like 
gills scattered along the sides of the neck. ‘‘Air- 
breathers’’ have either tubes, sacs or lungs. Insects 
have a system of branching air-tubes extending through 
the cavity of the body; scorpions and spiders have 
pulmonary sacs; snails have a breathing cavity on the 
right side of the neck; amphibians have gills when 
young and generally lungs only when mature; and the 
higher vertebrata have lungs alone. From the above 
facts it is evident that the breathing apparatus of 
different animals involved many separate evolutions if 
that was the method. It-is equally evident that we 
are entirely ignorant of the many necessary steps 
involved in these many evolutions. 

Mr. Darwin says that ‘‘in many cases it is most 
difficult to conjecture by what transitions many organs 
have arrived at their present state,’’ and yet he does 
not hesitate to draw a definite conclusion as to how 
they have been derived. His process reminds one of 
the game: ‘‘Heads up, I win; tails up, you lose.’’ 


ANALOGOUS AND Homo.LoGcous ORGANS. 


As to objections to the theory of evolution, Romanes 
says: If ‘‘similar organs or structures are to be met 
with in widely different branches of the tree of life, 
.. . this would be an objection fatal to the theory of 
natural selection, supposing these organs or structures 
in the cases compared are not merely analogous, but 
also homologous.’’ ‘‘Mr. Mivart has instanced the eye - 
of the cuttlefish as not only analogous to, but also 
homologous with, the eye of a true fish—that is to say, 
the eye of a mollusk with the eye of a vertebrate. And 

25 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





v 


he also instanced the remarkable resemblance of a 
shrew to a mouse—that is, of an insectivorous mammal 
to a rodent—not to mention other cases.’’ 

Wings.—F lying ‘‘has been developed independently 
in at least four different lines of descent—namely, in- 
sects, reptiles, birds and mammals.’’ The wings of 
reptiles, birds and mammals are both homologous and 
analogous—similar in general plan of structure and 
function. It is claimed by evolutionists that both birds 
and mammals have been evolved from reptiles inde- 
pendently of each other. The oldest known bird, the 
Archeopteryx, was a well-feathered bird and had well- 
developed ‘wings. There is no evidence to prove that 
it was evolved from a flying reptile—a Pterodactyl. 
Flying mammals in the form of bats did not appear 
till much later in geological history, and it is admitted 
that their wings could not have been derived from 
Pterodactyl. The improbability that these three analo- 
gous and homologous kinds of wings could have been 
separately evolved in these three widely separated 
classes of animals is very great. 

Natural selection assumes that a structure is pre- 
served because it is useful to the animal that possesses 
it, and this is based on the idea that it must be useful 
before it can be preserved. But it is evident that there 
are many parts of the body that would have been of 
no use during the many generations of the incipient 
Stages of evolution, and, therefore, some other explana- 
tion of their survival must be resorted to. 

Electric Organs—Mr. Romanes claims that the elec- 
tric organ of the skate presents the greatest difficulty 
as to the preservation of any organ during its incipient 
stages. He says: ‘‘Electric organs are known to occur 

26 


GOD’S METHOD OF WORKING 





in several widely different kinds of fish—such as the 
Gymnotus and the Torpedo. Whenever these organs 
do occur, they perform the function of electric batteries 
in storing and discharging electricity in the form of 
more or less powerful shocks. Here, then, we have a 
function which is of obvious use to the fish for the pur- 
poses both of offense and defense. These organs are 
everywhere composed of a transformation of muscular, 
together with an enormous development of nervous, 
tissue; but inasmuch as they occupy different positions, 
and are also in other respects dissimilar in the different 
zoological groups of fishes where they occur, no diffi- 
culty can be alleged as to these analogous organs being 
likewise homologous in different divisions in the aquatic 
vertebrata.’’ 

‘‘Now, in the particular case of the skate, the organ 
is situated in the tail, where it is of a spindle-like form, 
measuring, in a large fish, about two feet in length by 
about an inch in diameter at the middle of the spindle. 
Although its structure is throughout as complex and 
perfect as that of the electric organ of Gymnotus or 
Torpedo, its smaller size does not admit of its generat- 
ing a sufficient amount of electricity to yield a dis- 
charge that can be felt by the hand. Nevertheless, that 
it does discharge under suitable stimulation has been 
proved by Prof. Burdon Sanderson by means of a tele- 
phone, for he found that every time he stimulated the 
animal, its electrical discharge was rendered audible by 
a telephone. Here, then, the difficulty arises. For of 
what conceivable use is such an organ to its possessor? 
We can scarcely suppose that an aquatic animal is more 
sensitive to electric shocks than is the human hand: 
and even if such were the case, a discharge of so feeble 

27 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 
a 


a kind taking place in water would be short-circuited 
in the immediate vicinity of the skate itself. So there 
ean be no doubt that such weak discharges as the skate 
is able to deliver must be wholly imperceptible alike to 
prey and to enemies. Yet for the delivery of such dis- 
charges there is provided an organ of such high pecu- 
liarity and huge complexity, that, regarded as a piece 
of living mechanism, it deserves to rank as at once the 
most extremely specialized and the most highly elabor- 
ated structure in the animal kingdom. 

‘‘Thousands of separately formed elements are 
ranged in row after row, all electrically insulated one 
from another, and packed away into the smallest pos- 
sible space, with the obvious end, or purpose, of con- 
spiring together for the simultaneous delivery of an 
electric shock. Nevertheless, the shock when delivered 
is, as we have just seen, too slight to be of any con- 
celvable use to the skate. Therefore, it appears impos- 
sible to suggest how this astonishing structure—more 
astonishing, in my opinion, than the human eye or the 
human hand—can have ever been begun, or afterwards 
developed, by natural means of natural selection. For 
if it be not yet of any conceivable use to its possessor, 
clearly thus far survival of the fittest can have nothing 
to do with its formation. . . . On the other hand, seeing 
that electric organs when of larger size, as in the 
Gymnotus and Torpedo, are of obvious use to their pos- 
sessors, the facts of the case, so far as the skate is con- 
cerned, surely do not sanction the doctrine of ‘prophetic 
germs.’ The organ in the skate seems to be on its way 
towards becoming such an organ as we meet with in 
these other animals, and therefore, unless we can show 
that it is now, and in all previous stages of its evolution 

28 


GOD’S METHOD OF WORKING 


has throughout been, of use to the skate, the facts do 
present a serious difficulty to the theory of natural 
selection, while they readily lend themselves to the 
interpretation of a disposing or foreordaining mind, 
which knows how to construct an electric battery by 
thus transforming muscular tissues into electric tissues, 
and is now actually in process of constructing such an 
apparatus for the prospective benefit of future crea- 
tures.’’ 

‘‘Lastly, we must remember that not only have we 
here the most highly specialized, the most complex, and 
altogether the most elaboratively adaptive, organ in the 
animal kingdom, but also that in the formation of this 
structure there has been needed an altogether unparal- 
leled expenditure of the most physiologically expensive 
of all materials—namely, nervous tissue. Whether esti- 
mated by volume or by weight, the quantity of nervous 
tissue which is consumed in the electric organ of the 
skate is in excess of all the rest of the nervous.system 
put together. It is needless to say that nowhere else in 
the animal kingdom—except, of course, in other electric 
fishes—is there any approach to so enormous a develop- 
ment of nervous tissue for the discharge of a special 
function. Therefore, as nervous tissue is, physiologi- 
cally speaking, the most valuable of all materials, we 
are forced to conclude that natural selection ought. 
strongly to have opposed the evolution of such organs, 
unless, from the first moment of their inception, and 
throughout the whole course of their development, they 
were of some such paramount importance as biologically 
to justify so unexampled an expenditure, yet this para- 
mount importance does not admit of being so much as 
surmised, even where the organ has already attained 

29 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





the size and degree of elaboration which it presents in 
the skate.’ 

‘‘TIn view of all these considerations taken together, 
I freely confess that the difficulty presented by this 
ease appears to me of a magnitude and importance 
altogether unequaled by that of any other single case— 
or any series of cases—which has hitherto been encoun- 
tered by the theory of natural selection, so that if there 
were many other cases of the like kind to be met with 
in nature, I should myself at once allow that the theory 
of natural selection would have to be discarded.’’ 


NATURAL SELECTION INSUFFICIENT. 


Romanes says of natural selection: ‘‘If we under- 
stand this theory to set forth natural selection as the 
sole cause of organic evolution, then all the above objec- 
tions to the theory are not merely, as already stated, 
valid and formidable, but, as I will now add, logically 
insurmountable.’’ The above refers to three of the 
most formidable objections that have been urged against 
the theory, and these objections can not be met by the 
theory of natural selection. The three classes of facts 
that can not be explained by this theory are: ‘‘(1) 
That a large proportional number of specific, as well as 
of higher taxonomic, characters are seemingly useless 
characters, and therefore do not lend themselves to 
explanation by the Darwinian theory; (2) that the 
most general of all specific characters—viz., cross-infer- 
tility between allied species—can not possibly be due 
to natural selection, as is demonstrated by Darwin him- 
self; (8) that the swamping effects of free intercross- 
ing must always render impossible, by natural selection 
alone, any evolution of species in divergent (as dis- 

30 


GOD’S METHOD OF WORKING 





tinguished from serial) lines of change.’’ Darwin ex- 
pressly—and even vehemently—repudiates the claim 
“‘that natural selection alone is sufficient.’’ Wallace 
claimed that natural selection alone was sufficient. 
Darwin said: ‘‘I am convinced that natural selection* 
has been the main, but not the exclusive, means of 
modification. ”’ 

Not only Darwin and Romanes have stated that 
natural selection alone could not be the only factor in 
evolution, but Spencer, Cope, Mivart, and many other 
evolutionists, have agreed to this, so that it may be 
regarded as the common doctrine of evolutionists that 
natural selection alone will not account for evolution 
in the organic world. 

This makes it necessary to supplement this theory 
in various other ways, to some of which I will further 
refer, : 

OrGans or Locomotion.—It seems to me impossible 
that this theory can account for the preservation of 
legs, wings and fins, during their incipient stages. 

Fins.—According to evolution, fins were the first 
organs of locomotion among vertebrates. As to how 
fins originated, we are left to-guess. I know that it has 
been assumed by some that folds (or roughness) of 
skin occurred, which were gradually evolved through 
many generations into perfect fins. As to this, there 
is no evidence worthy of consideration. So far as 
known facts are concerned, the process of the evolution 
of fins is purely imaginary. In my opinion, this theory 
appeals to credulity at almost every step, and yet we 
are asked to accept it as science. To imagine that fins 
thus originated, and then to accept this as a conclusion 
of reason, is only to cut one of the many Gordian knots 

8 31 


Ral 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


that oceur all along the road of natural selection or of 
any theory of evolution. I insist that here is plainly 
one of the crucial tests, the force of which Mr. Darwin 
does not seem to have recognized. How could fins have 
originated? The evident answer is: We do not know 
and we have no means of knowing. The imaginary 
process of evolution is halted at this point, and is 
powerless to proceed, except by the use of the imagina- 
tion. But science demands facts, and not simply a 
vague theory on which to build. But in this case there 
is not even a color of facts. 

Vertebrates of all kinds never have more than four 
paired organs for locomotion, and they are either fins, 
legs or wings. Their normal position is one pair in 
front and the other aft. In many fishes, however, as — 
in the cod, the ventral fins, which correspond to the 
posterior limbs of animals, are in front of the pectoral 
fins, which are nearer the dorsal region. The various 
positions of fins demand more than one origin for these 
organs, more than one evolution, if we imagine that_ 
they were evolved. But this, as already seen, increases 
the difficulty, since it includes both homology and anal- 
ogy at the same time. Of course it may be imagined 
that fins have simply been shifted instead of having 
been separately evolved. 

Legs—It is claimed by evolutionists that fins by 
evolution have given rise to the limbs of higher forms. 
In this case it would be expected that an evident homol- 
ogy would exist between fins and the limbs of higher 
vertebrates. On this point Huxley says: ‘‘The limbs 
of fishes have an endo-skeleton, which only imperfectly 
corresponds with that of the higher Vertebrates. For 
while homologues of the cartilaginous, and even of the 

32 


GOD’S METHOD OF WORKING 





bony, constituents of the pectoral and pelvic arches of 
the latter are traceable in Fishes, the cartilaginous, or 
ossified, basal and radial supports of the fins themselves 
ean not be identified, unless in the most general way, 
with the limb-bones, or cartilages, of the other Verte- 
brates.’’ If Huxley, who was an evolutionist, could not 
see the homology between fins and legs, with his great ‘ 
knowledge of comparative anatomy, it probably does 
not exist. But evolution assumes the homology because 
this is absolutely necessary. 

It is easy to say that fins were changed into legs, 
and these into wings, legs and arms of the higher 
groups of vertebrates. The geological record, which we 
can not now consider, gives no trace of evidence as to 
how these changes took place. But this universal 
science (?) must push its way along and not let any- 
thing stand in its way. 

Wings.—It is admitted by evolutionists that wings 
have had three distinct origins—the wing of the ptero- 
dactyl, of the bird and of the bat. They are all both 
homologous and analogous. The wing of the pterodac- 
tyl, a flying reptile, was made by stretching a mem- 
brane from the tail and leg to the arm and one of its 
four fingers enormously elongated; the wing of a bat, 
a flying mammal, consists of a membrane stretched 
from the tail and leg to the-arm and between four of 
the five fingers much elongated; the wing of the bird 
consists of feathers attached to the skin, which is sup- 
ported by the bones. We are left to try to imagine 
how each and all these wings came into existence. Evo- 
lutionists make much of the fact that the wings of 
birds are at present in various conditions of develop- 
ment. The wings of the apteryx are the merest rudi- 

33 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





ments, and are of no use; those of the penguin serve 
merely as fins in water and as legs on land; those of 
the adult loggerhead duck help it to skim along the 
surface of the water, but are useless for flight; those 
of the ostrich may aid it in running; while the wings 
of most birds serve the purpose of flight. 

It is commonly assumed that birds that can not fly 
have lost the power of flight by decrease of the size of 
the wings. We do not know that this is true, but this 
may readily be granted without decreasing the strength 
of the argument against evolution. It is evident that 
the loss of an organ or its decrease in size, owing to 
disuse, is no evidence as to how an organ can come into 
existence in the first place. This last is that for which 
evolutionists must account, and not simply assume. It 
is easy to see that to start an organ when none exists, 
and preserve it through its long useless stages, is en- 
tirely different from gradually losing an organ that 
already exists. Besides, if functional organs have dis- 
appeared, a vestige always remains showing that they 
once existed. It is not safe, however, to infer that a 
mere rudiment indicates that an organ was once func- 
tional, as in the case of mamme in the male of genus 
homo. The origin of the two divisions of the birds has 
not been satisfactorily explained by the theory of evolu- 
tion. There are struthious birds, destitute of a keel on 
the breast-bone, and the carinate birds that have a keel. 
The ostrich, cassowary, emu, rhea, apteryx, dinornis and 
others belong to the first division, and other living birds 
to the latter. The skeletons of these two branches of 
birds differ from each other in important respects. 
Mivart says: ‘‘Now, birds and reptiles have such and 
so many points in common that Darwinians must re- 

34 


GOD’S METHOD OF WORKING 





gard the former as modified descendants of reptilian 
forms. But on Darwinian principles it is impossible 
that the class of birds so uniform and homogeneous 
should have had a double reptilian origin. If one set 
of birds sprang from one set of reptiles, and another 
set of birds from another set of reptiles, the two sets 
could never, by ‘natural selection’ only, have grown 
into such a perfect similiarity ; to admit such a phenom- 
enon would be equivalent to abandoning the theory of 
‘natural selection’ as the sole origin of species. This 
theory forbids the evolution of birds from reptiles along 
two separate lines, and it equally forbids the evolution 
by natural selection of one division of the birds from 
the other.’’ 

This difficulty has not been satisfactorily explained 
in the interests of evolution, but the theory halts not 
at this. Another Gordian knot must be cut. 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





II 
EVOLUTION 


HERE is a general stampede in certain quarters to 
make use of the word ‘‘evolution.’’ The word has 
become a talisman, a fetish, a charm, a mascot, in some 
cases a god. Its adorers ought to have prepared, and 
stamped with the word ‘‘evolution,’’ some special badge 
to be worn publicly over the heart of each disciple of 
this god. 

But what does the word ‘‘evolution’’ mean to these 
people? It may mean any one of a hundred things. 
To the average student it means: ‘‘I am up to date. I 
have adopted the scientific method. I am marching in 
the forefront of progress. I am in conformity with the 
scientific spirit of the age. I stand with the progres- 
sives. I am not afraid of being called an old fogy. I 
am not afraid of being looked upon as a back number. 
I can look all the great scholars and scientists in the 
face and say, ‘I am glad to be with you.’’’ All of 
these things, and many more that might be added, give 
the young fellow in college a splendid opinion of him- 
self and of his attainments. 

He looks at the cattle and horses and hogs and 
chickens, and other domestic animals, and says: ‘‘Yes, 
evolution is true. I see it going on among these animals 
all around me. I need no further proof. Living things 
have been in the world for millions of years, and they 

36 


EVOLUTION 





have progressed in structure from simple forms up to 
man. It is the most sensible solution of the problem 
to believe that higher forms have come by evolution 
from lower forms. This is the natural way, and God 
does all things through natural means and by natural 
laws. Besides, there is the plain case of the evolution 
of the modern horse, and if God evolves one species, he 
evolves all.’’ 

This is a fair summary by the average person who 
accepts the theory of evolution. It will be noticed that 
the great difficulties with regard to evolution are not 
considered at all in the above statement. Ignorance of 
the facts bearing on the theory, and of the many objec- 
tions to it, is a source of bliss to the average evolution- 
ist. 

I will consider briefly the evolution of the horse, 
which has been ridden unmercifully by the fraternity 
of evolutionists. Chamberlin and Salisbury, of Chicago 
University, in their ‘‘College Geology,’’ say: ‘‘The 
Miocene was a great epoch in the evolution of the horse 
Anchippus, Protophippus, pliohippus (Merrychippus), 
Hipparion, and other genera, flourished and deployed 
into forty or more species.’’ Here four genera of horses 
are named, and others referred to that are not named. 
Forty or more species of these genera have been found 
in the United States. According to the claims of evolu- 
tionists, the known species are few compared to the 
unknown. There must have been a great number of 
species. It is a universal rule among animals that a 
cross between two distinct species is not fertile, but 
sterile. The horse, the ass and the zebra are distinct 
species, and, if they cross at all, the offspring (mules) 
will not reproduce. The great number of species of 

37 


\ 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





extinct horses would, therefore, be of no value in the 
evolution of the horse, for the crosses would have been 
sterile, The evolution would have had to take place in 
a serial line, but here we encounter the difficulties of 
merging and the production of cross-sterility that 
always exist. 

But the great question with regard to the evolution 
of the horse is not the loss of toes, but it is, How did 
the horse get his four or five toes in the first place? 
Let it first be established that the four or five toed 
horse was produced by evolution, a thing that has not 
been done. The loss of parts in certain cases might be 
conceded for the sake of argument, but this is in no 
way an explanation as to how the parts came into exist- 
ence. There is much camouflage in trying to make loss 
of organs an explanation of their origin. 

Before calling attention to some of the applications 
of the word ‘‘evolution,’’ I will give some idea of its 
use in the larger and the largest sense. Le Conte de- 
fines it as follows: ‘‘Evolution is (1) continuous pro- 
gressive change, (2) according to certain laws, (3) by 
means of resident forces.’? The development of the 
embryo of a hen’s egg into a full-grown cock is, he 
Says, the type of all evolution. Also: ‘‘The process 
pervades the whole universe, and the doctrine covers 
alike every department of science—yea, every depart- 
ment of human thought.’’ This statement is accepted, 
probably, by most evolutionists. As to philosophical 
evolution, the Standard Dictionary says: ‘‘The cos- 
mological theory that accounts for the universe and its 
contents by the combination of separate and diffused 
atoms existing originally in a condition of absolute 
homogeneity.’? Also: ‘‘Specifically, in biology : (1) 

38 


EVOLUTION 





The series of steps by which a germ or a rudimentary 
part becomes an adult organism or a fully developed 
part; the succession of changes by which a germ passes 
from a simple to a complex condition; (2) the deriva- 
tion or the doctrine of the derivation of all forms of 
life by gradual modification from earlier and simpler 
forms or from one rudimentary form.’’ This last is 
the scope of Darwinian evolution. 

Darwin deals especially with organic evolution. He 
claims that all living things have been developed from 
a few simple, original forms or from one. Natural 
selection is the principal part of his theory. He says: 
‘‘Natural selection acts solely through the preservation 
of varieties in some way advantageous, which conse- 
quently endure.’’ 

EK. D. Cope defines evolution as follows: ‘‘The doc- 
trine of evolution may be defined as the teaching which 
holds that creation has been and is accomplished by 
the agency of the energies which are intrinsic in the 
evolving matter, and without the interference of agen- 
cies that are external to it. It holds this to be true of 
combinations and forms of inorganic nature, and those 
of organic nature as well. Whether the intrinsic ener- 
fies which accomplish evolution be forms of radiant or 
oiher energy only, acting inversely as the square of the 
distance, and without consciousness, or whether they be 
energies whose direction is affected by the presence of 
consciousness, the energy is property of the physical 
basis of tridimensional matter, and is not outside of it 
according to the doctrine we are about to consider. 
... The science of evolution is the science of creation.’” 

Le Conte, Cope, Osborn, Spencer and others teach 
that the forces resident in matter are the efficient cause 

39 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





of evolution. Evolution in this case can be nothing 
more than a system of naturalism, which fails to ac- 
count for life and for all psychic phenomena. It can 
give no scientific reason for the existence of the mind 
-of man. 

He who accepts organic evolution, including the 
evolution of man and of all human history, must of 
necessity accept cosmic evolution. I have elsewhere 
called attention to the fact that all changes in matter 
are due to the action of forces. A study of the changes, 
by evolution or otherwise, during the past long ages is 
a question of forces and their laws of action, and the 
‘question as to whether the forces in the inorganic world 
are sufficient to account for all the facts in the living 
world, is forced upon us. Before life appeared on the 
earth there was an immense time during which the 
‘world was undergoing changes that would fit it to sus- 
tain low forms of life. From the time of the oldest 
fossils, especially along the line of vertebrates, there 
was progressive movement in organization up to man. 
The fact of progress does not necessarily indicate that 
it was by way of evolution. 

Cosmic evolution is a universal process which in- 
cludes all changes, all events, material and immaterial, 
that occur. It is well to bear in mind the figure of a 
tree as representing correctly the whole process of 
organic evolution. The fact that there must always be 
continuity in the action of the forces of evolution in 
the organic world, is fundamental. This must not 
cease, nor at any place in the line be broken, otherwise 
it can not in the proper sense be called evolution. A 
break at any place in the organic world would termi- 
nate the process along that line. There has been a 

40 


EVOLUTION 





living genetic connection between all living beings as 
there is between the various parts of a tree. 

We speak of the evolution of the earth before living 
things appeared, when apparently nothing was being 
done except by the ordinary forces of nature acting on 
the inorganic world. Chemical actions among the mate- 
rials, cooling by radiation of heat into space, changes 
in the earth’s crust due to the force of gravitation, in- 
numerable electrical actions among the materials of 
the earth—these were the principal changes that were 
taking place. 

‘“‘By means of resident forces,’’ according to many, 
the next step in evolution took place; namely, the pro- 
duction of the simplest living things. At this point we 
must, from the scientific view, say that there is an 
absolute blank—that nature can not produce a living 
organism from inorganic materials alone—that living 
things from living things is the only known fact. Evo- 
lution, using simply the forces of the inorganic world, 
is not able to force its way into the living world. Some- 
thing more was necessary. We speak of the vital force 
in all living things. The word ‘‘evolution’’ must be 
used in a modified sense when we get into the living 
world. A new force has appeared. Cope accepts 
**vital force.’’ 

We imagine that the process continues into the 
animal world, where the sense of feeling is universal. 
Evolution is absolutely helpless to account for the 
origin of feeling in the animal world. It must attach 
a new idea to the forces involved in the process, as 
evolution progresses through many sensations, special 
senses, a multitude of instincts, and all the faculties of 
the human mind. As new and higher psychic powers 

41 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION | 





come into being, evolution must acknowledge her help- 
lessness to account for them and must change her 
assumptions repeatedly as steps upward are taken. 
And yet, evolutionists call the whole process through 
the psychological regions ‘‘evolution.’’ 

There is no continuity through this region in pass- 
ing from one kind of sensation to another, and from 
sensations to instincts, and from one instinct to another, 
and on to the highest powers of man. Unless it can be 
Shown that psychological powers constitute a genetic 
chain through the animal kingdom, including man, 
from the lowest to the highest powers, then the con- 
tinuity which evolution demands is broken. It is im- 
possible to prove that such continuity among psycho- 
logical powers ever existed, and so the word ‘‘evolu- 
tion’’ ought not to be applied to the whole process. 

The gap between the mind of man and the powers 
of even the highest animals is immense, and it has not 
in any way been bridged by evolution. Even if we 
assume theistic evolution as the method, and that God 
is doing all by natural laws through natural causes, the 
gaps exist in the process as they would in atheistic 
evolution, and demand special acts of the Creator to 
bridge them. These acts are miracles. A miracle is 
not a lawless event, but it comes within the domain of 
God’s spiritual laws. 

As to materialistic science accounting for the whole 
process of creation, Le Conte says: ‘‘Let no one imag- 
ine, as he is conducted by the materialistic scientist in 
the paths of evolution from the inorganic to the or- 
ganic, from the organic to the animate, from the ani- 
mate to the rational and moral, until he lands, as it 
seems to him, logically and inevitably, in universal 

42 


EVOLUTION 





materialism—let no one imagine that he has walked all 
the way in-the domain of science. He has stepped 
across the boundary into the domain of philosophy. 
But on account of the strong tendency to materialism 
and the skillful guidance of his leaders, there seems 
to be no such boundary; he does not distinguish be- 
tween the inductions of science and the inferences of 
a shallow philosophy ; the whole-is accredited to science, 
and the final conclusion seems to carry with it all the 
certainty which belongs to scientific results.’’ Surely 
it is a false philosophy. Materialism fails all along the 
line and it offers no nexus between the inorganic world 
and mind. 

With regard to the mind of man, Le Conte says: 
‘‘In man alone, and only in his higher activities, 
psychic. changes precede and determine the brain 
changes. In man alone brain changes are determined 
not only by external but by internal impressions. Man 
alone perceives not only objects—material things—but 
also relations and properties abstracted from the ob- 
jects—that is, ideal things; and, moreover, not only rela- 
tions between objects, but also relations between rela- 
tions or ideas. In man alone there is an inner world— 
microcosm—the things of thoughts, ideas, ete. This 
self-acting power of spirit on the things of tself, in- 
stead of reacting merely as played upon by external 
nature, is characteristic of man, and is a necessary 
result and a sign of severance, partial at least, of 
“physical bond with Nature.’’ 

Again: ‘‘Self-consciousness is the direct recognition 
of the one reality, spirit, of which all others are the 
sign and shadow—the true reality which underlies and 
gives potency to all abstractions or ideas.’’ Again: 

43 


i 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





‘‘Life is a higher form of force than the physical or 
chemical. Life-phenomena are therefore super-physical, 
and if we confined the word ‘Nature’ to dead Nature 
they would be supernatural. ... Man alone is a child 
of God as well as a product of Nature.’’ Also: ‘‘With- 
out spirit-immortality this beautiful cosmos . . . would 
be precisely as if it had never been—an idle dream, an 
idiot tale signifying nothing. I repeat, without spirit- 
immortality the cosmos has no meaning.’’ 

We have been considering the use of the word 
‘‘evolution.’” We may admit that laws, or methods, 
exist In all departments of nature, but this does not 
mean that methods in a higher department are the 
product of a lower department; it does not mean that 
the higher methods grow out of the lower; it does not 
mean that there is genetic connection by way of evolu- 
tion, beginning with the dead world and ending with 
the human mind. The word ‘‘evolution’’ can not be 
properly applied to the whole process, because con- 
tinuity fails in innumerable places. 

The evolution of a mature chicken from the germ 
of a hen’s egg is a familiar occurrence. In this case 
the continuity is unbroken. The evolution of varieties 
under domestication by man’s selective power is well 
known. All varieties of the common fowl are cross- 
fertile with each other and with the parent form. 
Cross-sterility does not mark them as species. The case 
of the common fowl marks the limit of our knowledge 
of the evolution of species. It has not been shown that 
any species has been evolved. Darwin’s son, writing 
the biography of his father, says: ‘‘We can not prove 
that a single species has changed.’’? Much less can it 

44 


EVOLUTION 


be shown that the great groups, sub-kingdoms, classes, 
etc., have been produced by the process of evolution. 

The word ‘‘evolution’’ is used in all fields of human 
thought and activity. We speak of the evolution of 
the stone implements during the stone ages; evolution 
in the art of fishing, in the chase, in war, in agricul- 
ture, in household furnishings, in clothing, in methods. 
of travel, in railroads, telegraphs, telephones, in human 
government, in medicine, in surgery, in every branch 
of science; in printing, in language, in laws, in litera- 
ture—in fact, the word ‘‘evolution’’ is used to include 
every branch of human thought and activity. It is 
convenient, and is,one of the most satisfying words, to. 
the average mind, that of late years has come into gen- 
eral use. The reason why it satisfies is that it seems to- 
explain a great number of difficulties. I am sure that 
the word as commonly used is very elastic and that it 
can be accommodated to many purposes—like a piece 
of rubber, it can be pressed into a sphere, a cube, into 
any geometric shape, elongated, widened, rendered more 
pliant or more rigid, aS occasion may require. 

But, as I have endeavored to show, the word ‘‘evo- 
lution’’ has different meanings in different parts of 
creation. If we consider the growth that has taken 
place in the art of printing and the printing-press, and 
call it evolution, we can see that the word does not have 
the same meaning that it has when applied to the 
organic world. The Chinese had some kind of printing 
far back towards the beginning of the Christian era. 
Various countries in Europe, and especially Germany, 
were doing more or less printing, imperfectly, six or 
seven hundred years ago. By the year 1454 it is said 
that Gutenberg’s labors had brought printing to a 

45 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





‘“perfect state~at Mainz.’’ ‘‘The shape and manufac- 
ture of the types used as early as 1470 do not seem to 
have differed materially from those of the present 
types.’’ By 1480 ‘‘it appears that steel, brass, copper, 
tin, lead and iron wire were all used in the manufac- 
ture of types at that period.’’ Letters made of wood 
were used before those of metal. 

The first printing-presses were small and crude, and 
were worked by hand. Since Gutenberg’s day thou- 
sands of different men have worked improving the 
printing-press in all its details, until now the huge 
presses of great complexity weighing many tons turn 
out hundreds of thousands of many-folio newspapers 
printed, pasted and folded, all in a few hours. And 
then the linotype machine has done much to facilitate 
the preparation of type. 

With regard to the improvements of the printing- 
press, each one who aided made some improvement in 
the press as it already existed. Each availed himself 
of the labors of his predecessors. The progress at every 
_ Step was due to the human mind, but it was not evolu- 
tion in the proper sense of the word. The necessary 
continuity in time, without any break in the mental 
processes involved, was entirely absent. The men who 
made the improvements in the printing-press were 
_ scattered along through hundreds of years, and many 
years frequently elapsed before any great improvement 
was made. The word ‘‘evolution’’ can not be applied 
here as it is in the organic world. In the organic world, 
if evolution took place, and if the living species have 
been evolved, it was necessary that living physical con- 
tinuity should have existed through all the past ages 
from the oldest living thing till the present time. 

46 


EVOLUTION 


Such continuity in the living world by the forces of 
evolution and by genetic connections of evolving organ- 
isms was absolutely necessary. In the vast field of 
human progress no mental continuity has existed or 
could exist. In the evolving physical world the con- 
nection must be physical. In the world of mind the 
progress is due to the action of isolated individual 
minds which are separated in time and space. In the 
world of mind each one is a free agent, and the im- 
provements in all fields of human interest are due to 
freedom of thought and freedom of execution every- 
where. The action of the mind, including free will, is 
not on a level with the action of the forces in the world 
below. 

Evolution in the lower world, where things run in 
mechanical grooves, can not be like the evolution in the 
~ world of mind, where events are determined by thought 
and free will. One event does not mechanically grow 
-out of another in human affairs, but the mind of man 
takes advantage ef existing things as a foundation for 
greater structures. What it adds to any existing thing 
_is an original creation, and not a blind mechanical re-— 
sult. The word ‘‘evolution’’ includes not only the idea 
of change, but of continuous, unbroken change, and also 
the idea that certain invariable forces are producing 
the changes that take place. The word as used is mis- 
leading because of the variable meanings attached to it. 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION . 





iil 
THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


HE first great evolutionists, beginning with Darwin, 
and including Huxley, Spencer, Tyndall and 
others, based the theory of evolution on matter, motion 
and force. It was purely a system of naturalism that 
did not recognize God, nor the Bible, nor what the 
Christian regards especially as the supernatural. The 
process, being strictly scientific, necessarily excluded 
miracles. Evolution was, according to their view, ‘‘the 
science of creation,’ by means of ‘‘resident forces’’; 
that is, by means of forces that reside in, and are con- 
rected with, matter. 

Le Conte has defined it as follows: ‘‘Evolution is 
(1) progressive change, (2) according to certain laws, 
(3) by means of resident forces. . . . The process per- 
vades the whole universe, and the doctrine concerns 
alike every department of science—yea, every depart- 
ment of human thought.’’ 

The process is universal. It includes all that has 
occurred in the past and will include all in the future. 
It is, according to theistic evolution, God’s one and 
only way of doing things. In the organic world it 
claims that all species of animals and plants have been 
evolved from one or a few simple original forms. The 
imaginary tree of life would include all organic beings 
if evolution has taken place. The process has been 

48 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





continuous, unbroken from age to age. There were ‘‘no 
gaps’’ in the process. A break in the physical con- 
tinuity would have ended the work of evolution at 
that point. 

No cosmic evolutionist can accept a miracle at any 
point of the natural process. To him a miracle as a 
part of evolution would be unthinkable. If a miracle 
could occur at all, it would have to occur within the 
process of evolution, as a.part of it. A miracle would 
be a break in the continuity which the theory demands. 
It has been said that evolution is ‘‘the process through 
which God originated everything.’’ This is the correct 
idea of the process. 

The theologians became alarmed at the infidel evolu- 
tionists because they thought that science had proved 
that all things were produced by evolution. They began 
to consider how they could reconcile theology and 
science. They imagined that evolution was an estab- 
lished science. They said: ‘‘We will change the lion 
into a lamb by changing its name.’’ And so they called 
it theistic evolution, but accepted the agnostic or athe- 
istic method of evolution and began to sleep comfort- 
ably over their wisdom (?). But evolution is not a 
science; it is only a theory that can not be proved to 
be true. 

There can be no conflict between Christianity and 
true science, for God is the author of both. There is 
irreconcilable conflict between Christ and the cosmic 
theory of theistic evolution. This theory is not science. 
When it becomes an established science, Christian theo- 
logians will be obliged to ‘‘fold their tents and hie 
away,’’ and betake themselves to other callings. The 
reason for this is evident; God can not work by two 

49 


a 


i THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





methods that are opposed to each other in principle. 
If theistic cosmic evolution includes all that God does, 
then everything that he does must be a part of the 
process. | 

Much of the Bible, much of Christ’s life, can not be 
explained by the process of evolution. In what I have 
published, I have stated that miracles can not be in- 
cluded as a part of evolution, and I have called upon 
theistic evolutionists to explain how the miracles of the 
Bible, or any miracle, can be included as a part of 
evolution. No answer to this has come from any source. 
I have stated that if this question can be satisfactorily 
answered it will go far towards reconciling Christ and 
theistic evolution. 

Many have thought that theistic evolution is Chris- 
tran evolution. They have said, if God is in it, it must 
be all right. A man may be a theist and not a Chris- 
tian. Such a one accepts God, but not Christ. John 
Fiske was a theistic evolutionist, but he did not believe 
in miracles. Most of the Jews are theists, but not 
Christians. If they are theistic evolutionists, they are 
not Christian evolutionists. It is evident that theistic 
evolution stops short of being Christian evolution. This 
distinction is highly important, for believing that the 
two are identical has led many astray, so that they 
regard it as a matter of indifference whether or not 
they accept evolution. 

I have said that theistic evolution is conceivable; 
but Christian evolution is inconceivable. The latter is 
true because evolution can not include Christ and his 
miracles as a part of the process. Christ’s life here 
began with a miracle. In Luke 1:35 we‘read: ‘‘And 
the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost 

50 


al 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest 
shall overshadow thee: therefore that holy thing which 
shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.’’ 
But, says theistic evolution, this miracle did not occur, 
and Jesus was only a man with a human father. He 
could not speak with authority as the Son of God who 
came down from heaven; as ‘‘God manifest in the 
flesh’’; as the one who said, ‘‘I came down from heaven 
to do my Father’s will.’? He could not, as a part of 
the universal process of theistic evolution, perform 
miracles; therefore his body did not rise from the dead, 
and, therefore, he did not command his apostles to ‘‘go | 
into all the world and preach the gospel’’ after he 
arose from the dead, and did not eat with them, and 
talk with them and teach them. Jesus being only a 
man, baptism and the Lord’s Supper have no divine 
authority and there is no propitiation in his blood. 
Jesus not having risen from the dead, this scene could 
not have taken place. Acts 1:10, 11: ‘‘And while 
they. were looking stedfastly into heaven ‘as he went, 
behold two men stood by them in white apparel; who 
also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye looking into 
heaven? this Jesus, who was received up from you into 
heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye beheld him 
roing into heaven.’’ 

Jesus was not evolved from the grave by the process 
of evolution, for this would have been a miracle. He 
did not say to his apostles after his resurrection (Luke 
24:39): ‘‘See my hands and my feet, that it is I my- 
self: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and 
bones, as ye behold me having.’’ Not having risen, he 
did not say to his apostles (Luke 24:49): ‘‘Tarry ye 
in the city, until ye be clothed with power from on 

51 


- THEISTIC EVOLUTION 
eee 


high.’’ Nor did he give (Acts 1:2-5) ‘‘commandment 
through the Holy Spirit unto the apostles whom he had 
chosen: to whom he also showed himself alive after his 
passion by many proofs, appearing unto them by the 
space of forty days, and speaking the things concerning 
the kingdom of God: and, being assembled together 
with them, he charged them not to depart from Jeru- 
salem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, 
said he, ye heard from me: for John indeed baptized 
with water; but ye shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit 
not many days hence.’’ 

The Holy Spirit does not do its work by evolution. 
Jesus was not raised from the dead and could not have 
ascended, as above stated, and he could not have sent 
the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, nor could the 
apostles have spoken ‘‘with other tongues as the Spirit 
gave them utterance.’’ The people were not ‘‘con- 
founded because that every man heard them in his 
own language.’’ The miraculous occurrences on the 
day of Pentecost could not have been a part of evolu- 
tion, because miracles did not occur. Therefore, there 
was no day of Pentecost anything like that described, 
and the three thousand were entirely mistaken in what 
they saw and heard. The church in Jerusalem was 
established by the thousands of deluded men and 
women who obeyed the gospel, and it grew and flour- 
ished in spite of the errors on which it was founded. 

The account, in Acts 8, of the healing by Peter and 
John of the man lame from his birth, who had been 
brought and laid daily at the gate of the temple, and 
who was well known to the multitude, is not true, because 
these apostles could not have performed that miracle as 
a part of evolution. The writer was simply mistaken. 

52 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





Accounts of miracles are scattered through the 
Bible. They can not be eliminated without destroying 
the historical value of the documents in which they are 
found. A miracle does not conflict with natural law, ; 
but it is something that natural law alone can not per- 
form—it is supernatural. Jesus himself put a high 
estimate on miracles as testimony. John the Baptist, 
in prison, sent two of his disciples to Jesus with this 
question: ‘‘Art thou he that cometh, or look we for 
another? In that hour he cured many of diseases and 
plagues and evil spirits; and on many that were blind 
he bestowed sight. And he answered and said unto 
them, Go and tell John the things which ye have seen 
and heard; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, 
the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are 
raised up, the poor have good tidings preached to 
them’’ (Luke 7: 20-22). This was the most convincing 
message of his Messiahship that he could have sent to 
John. Jesus called attention repeatedly to the fact that 
his works bore witness of him. It is perfectly evident 
that the denial of Christ’s miracles is a denial of Christ 
himself. 

The so-called Christian evolutionists may well be 
anxious with regard to miracles. He minifies their 
importance as evidence—he sometimes claims that they 
are of no importance as evidence at present; claims 
that they are weights to be gotten rid of, rather than 
helps. If I were a cosmic theistic evolutionist, I would 
deny the possibility of miracles, knowing that God can 
not do all things by the continucus unbroken process 
of evolution, and also, at the same time, do some of 
them by a broken process which admits of miracles. I 
have asked in vain that some Christian cosmic theistic 

53 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





evolutionist will explain how miracles can be harmon- 
ized with his theory. I take it to be impossible to 
harmonize them. 

There are many places in the Bible where God is 
represented as communicating directly with men in 
special ways. The conversation of God with Moses at 
the burning bush was not by evolution (Ex. 3:4-6): 
“‘God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and 
said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am J. And he 
said, Draw not nigh hither; put off thy shoes from off 
thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy 
ground. Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, 
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of 
Jacob.”’ Ex. 3:14: ‘‘And God said unto Moses, I 
AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say 
unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto 
you.”’ . 
Ex. 20:1: ‘‘And God spake all these words, Say- 
ing,’’ and then follow the ten commandments that God 
gave. Ex. 20:22: ‘‘And the Lord said unto Moses, 
Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Ye 
yourselves have seen that I talked with you from 
heaven.’’ God did not give the commandments by the 
process of evolution. 

The call of Abraham; the announcement from 
heaven at the baptism of Christ, ‘‘This is my beloved 
Son;’’ the message on the Mount of Transfiguration, 
‘‘This is my beloved Son, ... hear ye him,’’ and the 
voice of Jesus at Saul’s conversion, ‘‘I am Jesus whom 
thou persecutest,’’ were not due to the process of evolu- 
tion. God’s revelations to men, as recorded in the 
Bible, were supernatural, and not by continuous evolu- 
tion. 

54 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





According to the theory of evolution, there can be 
no answer to prayer except a subjective answer due to. 
a reflex action upon the mind of the petitioner. An 
objective answer, such as that to Elijah when God sent. 
down fire from heaven onto his altar, required a special 
act of God, which evolution could not perform. To the 
man who believes in God the subjective answer might 
be as effective without God as with him. 

Many of those who accept evolution as a working 
hypothesis, do so because they say that they want to 
conform to the thought of the age. With regard to. 
this it may be said that to conform to it as a work- 
ing hypothesis is to accept it as established science. 
Teachers who apply it to the evolution of the Christian 
religion proceed as if the religion of the New Testa-. 
ment has been evoluted from lower forms of religion. 
They take up the erude ideas of various savage tribes. 
and try to show how, by evolution, the Christian re- 
ligion has come to man. The very idea of the one. 
God, according to them, has come by way of evolution 
into the mind of man. In this they fail to tell us how 
this idea came to the one little people so early, before 
science had given to the world the idea of the unity of 
nature, and why this idea persisted so doggedly among: 
that special people, while all other nations, even the 
cultured Greeks, that surrounded the Jews, were poly-. 
theistic. 

The Bible is the one supreme, triumphant book on. 
monotheism, as well as the one book on Christianity. 
To place the origin of that book on the basis of natu-. 
ralism, as a product of the process of evolution, is to: 
repudiate all its highest and holiest claims. The Chris-. 
tian world will not stand for this, however subtly and. 

55 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 








plausibly its claims may be urged. The great danger 
here is that indifference which grows out of ignorance 
of the real situation. The Christian world believes in 
the Bible so inspired that all of its messages can be 
relied on as being true, and that many of them are 
supernatural revelations of God to man. 

That which strikes one most forcibly on reading the 
Bible is the unity which the one-God idea gives to all 
of its sixty-six books, written through a period of six- 
teen hundred years, by forty different authors. These 
writers and the great characters of whom they wrote, 
who are recognized as being among the greatest men 
who ever lived, believed that God spoke through them. 
Adam and Noah and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses 
and Samuel, Elijah and Elisha and David and Solo- 
mon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and all the 
other prophets, were men among that little people who 
did more to establish the idea of the one God in the 
world than all the mighty hosts of other nations. It is 
said that ‘‘the word of the Lord’’ came to this one and 
to that one. It is said that God communicated per- 
sonally with these men. They all believed that God 
revealed himself to them. It would be strange indeed 
if all these mighty men, who stand highest for intellect 
and character, should have been mistaken, and enter- 
tained the strange delusion that God revealed himself 
to them. Was it simply a sublime streak of insanity 
that ran through the minds of these greatest men of 
the Jewish race, or did ‘‘the word of the Lord’’ come 
to them ? 

We can easily imagine that one man might be mis- 
taken, but when it comes to a large number of the 
greatest minds, and extending through hundreds of 

56 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





years, we can not believe that they were all mistaken. 
In defense of the idea of the one God who reveals him- 
self to men and eares for them, this little nation of 
Jews battled against the great heathen nations around 
them and poured out their blood freely in the name of 
the great Jehovah. They believed, as the prophet said, 
‘“‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith 
Jehovah of hosts.”’ 

in the New Testament we find John the Baptist as 
the forerunner of Christ; Jesus as the supreme head; 
Peter, James, John, Paul, and the other apostles—a 
remarkable group, such as we find nowhere else in the 
religious world—establishing a new religion, which 
Christians believe is destined to revolutionize and save 
the world. These men all believed in miracles, believed 
that God made known his will to men, as on the day of 
Pentecost, through his Holy Spirit, and in a way that 
could not have been a part of theistic evolution. 
The life of Jesus is crowded with miracles. They 
are so interwoven as a part of his daily life that 
they can not be separated from it without denying 
his claims. He who accepts Jesus must, of necessity, 
accept his wonderful works. The man who seeks a 
gospel by evolution must go outside of the New 
Testament. 

It is evident that the forty writers of the Bible all 
believed that God made known his will to them by 
revealing himself in ways that could not be mistaken. 
They called upon him in prayer and he answered their 
prayers, sometimes by visible miracles. The apostles 
asked Jesus why they could not cast an unclean spirit 
out of a boy. He said: ‘‘This kind can come out by 
nothing, save by prayer.’’ 

57 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


We must accept the fact that the great characters 
of the Bible, and the forty writers of this book, could 
not all have been mistaken when they claimed that 
God communicated with them, gave them his word and 
answered their prayers. ‘‘The word of the Lord came’’ 
to this one and to that one as is recorded many times 
in the Old Testament. And so Christians gladly accept 
the Bible as the book of God, as the one-God book. 


58 


EVOLUTION AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 





IV 
EVOLUTION AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 


HE teaching of evolution in the public schools is 

a matter of vast interest to the public. If it is an 
established science, by all means let it be taught; but 
if it is only a theory, let it be fully discussed from the 
evidence, by teachers who are competent, and with 
those who are mature enough and well enough informed 
to understand what they are doing. Practically all of 
the teachers of this theory at present have accepted it 
as a dogma, and are not well enough acquainted with 
the facts to teach the subject in the proper way. The 
pupils, immature as they are, are only empty vessels 
ready to receive whatever the teachers put into them. 
And so the dogma, evolution, is being widely propa- 
gated in our high schools, and, in some places, in the 
grades below, and in our normal schools, among the 
thousands of immature girls and boys who are to be- 
come the future teachers in our common schools, who 
will teach it dogmatically as they have received it from 
their dogmatic teachers. These teachers are especially 
fond of dwelling on what they regard as the evolution 
of man from some animal ancestor, and of connecting 
him with the brute creation, both in his physical and 
mental being. According to the teaching of these dog- 
matists, it becomes highly important to understand that 
man’s body bears all the stamps of the brute, but that 

59 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 
eS ee aS a a Lee a See A Jka ee wa 
especially the mind of the child during its development 
manifests in many ways the qualities of its brute ances- 
tors. That it is most important to study the mind of 
the child in education, during all. of its stages of 
growth, no one will doubt. That it is necessary to seek 
a brute origin for these powers in the mental make-up 
of the child is simply absurd. I am sure that nothing 
is gained in education by trying to connect the human 
being, both in body and in mind, with the brute crea- 
tion. And yet this is being widely done, with the claim 
that it is a great help in education. Pestalozzi, and 
others who began to revolutionize child education, did 
not need the dogma, evolution, in order to help them 
understand the mind of the child. | 
“The Normal Child and Primary Edueation,’’ by 
Arnold L. Gesell, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, 
Los Angeles State Normal, was a book in use in the 
Los Angeles State Normal School as a text-book three 
years ago, when I was living in Los Angeles. The 
author of this book does not hesitate to dogmatically 
declare that man has come by evolution. ‘‘Pithecan- 
thropus erectus’’ ‘‘represents at least man’s immediate 
precursor.’’ How glibly and with what self-assurance 
this teacher of future teachers writes, knowing that it 
will be accepted by most of his readers without ques- 
tion. Hear him again: ‘‘Man is not descended from a 
monkey. Man and ape represent each a distinct Species, 
equally descended from a common generalized proto- 
type. This generalized human-simian ancestor was the 
remote precursor of man, and lived in Miocene times, 
say a million years before Pithecanthropus erectus. It 
Should also be said that in this chapter we are trying 
to tell a simple narrative, and not attempting a critical 
60 


EVOLUTION AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 


discussion of the moot questions concerning the history 
of man.’’ Why did not the author say that the above 
is purely imaginary ? 

The author urges the free use of the imagination to 
picture the facts of science. He says: ‘‘Should we not 
have the courage of thought to picture to ourselves the 
character of these early migrations and immigrants ?’’ 
‘‘Agile in their native homes, they walked the earth 
with clumsy gait, their broad shoulders stooping, their 
knees bent.’’ What splendid facts he makes by the 
use of his imagination! And this is the ‘‘scientific 
method’’! Again he says: Man’s ‘‘complete occupa- 
tion of the world was probably under way by the close 
of the Tertiary epoch.’’ It has been shown by a large 
number of the best authorities that man did not exist 
till after the Tertiary—that he appeared not earlier 
than the close of the glacial—epoch, estimated to have 
been from five to ten thousand years ago in America. 
I will quote some of these further on. Again he says: 
‘‘The home of most primitive man was like that of the 
Swiss Family Robinson. Not only in appearance, but 
to some extent in habits, he must have resembled the 
nearest kin. . . . Some writers have even questioned 
whether he had the cortical neurons that would enable 
him to talk. At any rate, his utterances were thick and 
clung to the base of his tongue; for nimbleness and 
subtility of articulation go with the development of 
abstract ideas, of which he possessed, very few. His 
life was probably arboreal until the increasing cold. 
climate drove him into caves... .”’ 

‘‘With the close of the Tertiary epoch a great 
meteorological and geological change came over the 
earth, which had a powerful effect upon the natural 

61 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





history of man. Mysteriously from the north crept a 
great ice cap, which covered a good part of the north- 
ern hemisphere with glaciers and icebergs. As mysteri- 
ously it retreated, to reappear at least once again. In 
the warm interglacial period—a duration of perhaps 
five hundred thousand years—the first achievements of 
human culture were made. In this period fall the 
eclithic and paleolithic ages—the latter lasting, accord- 
ing to Keane, about three hundred thousand years. 
Even though these figures are but an estimate, they 
will serve to impress the thoughtful reader with the 
comparative brevity of our historical era, the ancient 
lineage of our civilization, and the very primitive ances- 
try of our modern child.’’ 

The above are samples of wmaginary facts with 
which the author loads two of the first chapters in this 
‘book for making known to young teachers the scientific 
evolution of man (?). Why should the public who 
supports these schools suffer such unverified and unver- 
ifiable stuff to be crammed dogmatically into the minds 
of those who are to teach the rising generation, and 
through them to teach the generations to come? All 
science may well be taught when needed, but these 
things are not science, but worthless theories, and the 
teaching of them in the usual way is a waste of time. 
This author, having written two chapters as to the 
evolution of man, in a later chapter continues as fol- 
lows: ‘‘The present is born of the past and the past 
abides in the present, and to understand the present 
we must appreciate the past. That is the excuse of the 
two foregoing chapters, which, although they may be 
but rough, surely emphasize the fact that the child is 
the product of a most remote and remarkable antiquity. 

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How far back we trace his pedigree is a matter of taste. 
Surely we are descended from the neolithic EKuropeans 
who lived over a score of millenniums ago, and these in 
turn were descended from paleclithic ancestors who 
chipped rough stone implements for some three hun- 
dred thousand years. And if we add the vague eolithic 
period, we may say that the span of man’s distinctly 
human sojourn on the earth measures a half-million 
years. Some would multiply this by two, and if we 
include the postulated Miocene precursor of man, we 
shall have to multiply by five or six or even more.’’ 

What delicious nonsense to serve up to teachers! 
and in the name of science! What a vast enlarging 
and ever-expanding view of our noble ancestors during 
the past millions of years as they roosted in the tree- 
tops, and with thickened tongues jabbered vague sounds 
that bespoke empty pates! Surely we ought to be very 
thankful for this brilliant imaginary history of our 
ancestors during the past few millions of years. By 
this method of writing, any amount of space can be 
filled. 

I will now call attention to the testimony of some 
leading scientists as to the evolution of man and as to 
the length of time he has probably been here. 

Prof. Alexander Winchell says: ‘‘Man has no place 
till after the reign of ice. It has been imagined that 
the close of the reign of ice dates back perhaps a hun- 
dred thousand years. There is no evidence of this. 
The fact is that we ourselves came upon the earth in 
time to witness the retreat of the glaciers. They still 
linger in the valleys of the Alps and along the northern 
shores of Europe and Asia. The fact is we are not so 
far out of the dust, chaos and barbarism of antiquity 

5 63 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





as we had supposed. The very beginnings of our race 
are almost in sight. Geological events which, from the 
force of habit in considering them, we had imagined to 
be located far back in the history of things, are found 
to have transpired at our very doors. 

‘‘During the past year [1903] caves were examined 
in Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Virginia, 
Maryland and Pennsylvania by Professor Holmes, who 
discovered plenty of human relics, but all of them were 
Indian.’’ He says: ‘‘The bones of -all recent animals 
are found in the caves of this country; likewise those 
of many animals long ago extinct, such as the giant 
sloth and large species of tapir. Remains of early 
inhabitants more ancient than the Indians, however, 
seem to be wholly absent. 

‘‘There is no evidence at all to prove that man is 
very ancient on this continent. All ascertained facts 
seem to point to the conclusion that no human pre- 
ceeded the Indians in America. Where the Indians came 
from is uncertain, but they are surely derived from the 
same ancestry as the Asiatic Mongols. Their straight, 
black hair, physiognomy and other physical traits show 
that.’’ 

Professor Holmes says that the great ice sheet 
spread over northern Asia and America three hundred 
thousand years ago and did not disappear till about 
ten thousand years ago. 

Prof. George Frederick Wright, one of the highest 
authorities on the glacial epoch, ‘‘has reached the con- 
clusion that it ended not earlier than from seven to 
ten thousand years ago.’’ 

‘‘Prof. Joseph Prestwich collected much evidence 
which goes to show that the close of the glacial period 

64 


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falls within the limits of eight and twelve thousand 
years ago.”’ 

*““M. Adhemar and James Croll believed that it 
closed not earlier than eleven thousand years ago.’’ 

‘*Prof. Rollin D. Salisbury and Dr. Warren Upham, 
among the most recent American geologists, think that 
seven to ten thousand years ago is a fair estimate.”’ 

*‘In a review article [1904], Dr. Upham, speaking 
of the post-glacial era, says that from the studies of 
Niagara by Wright and myself, coinciding approxi- 
mately with the estimate of Winchell and with a large 
number of estimates and computations collected by 
Hanson from many observers in America and Europe, 
it certainly seems well demonstrated that this period 
[post-glacial] is from seven thousand to ten thousand 
years.’’ 

Dr. Wm, Andrews thinks that the ice age closed 
‘‘not further away than from five to seven thousand 
five hundred years ago.”’ 

‘‘Prof. Edward Hall, secretary of the Victoria Insti- 
tution, London, a specialist on these matters, says: 
‘Not in one single case in the whole of Europe or 
America has a trace of man’s existence been found be- 
low the only deposits which we have a right to assume 
were developed and produced by the great ice sheets 
of the early glacial periods.’ This is fully concurred in 
by Professors Hayes, Le Conte, Boyd, C. H. Dawkins, 
Dr. Gandry, John Evans, W. H. Holmes, M. Favre, and 
by not a few others.’’ 7 

Prof. W. H. Haynes, a leading American geologist, 
says: ‘‘The evidence for the antiquity of man on the 
hypothesis of evolution is purely speculative, no human 

65 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





remains having as yet been found in either Miocene or 
Pliocene strata.’’ 

Prof. Joseph Le Conte says: ‘‘The Miocene man is 
not at present acknowledged by a single careful geolo- 
gist.’ 

‘*M. Reinach, author of ‘La Prehistorique,’ says: 
‘There are no traces of man anywhere in the tertiary 
period which brings us to the threshold of historic 
times.’ ”’ 

Professors Chamberlin and Salisbury, of Chicago 
University, say (‘‘College Geology,’’ pp. 922-923, 
1909) : ‘‘In America, previous to the last decade of the 
last century, no small mass of prehistoric material of 
human origin had been assembled and somewhat widely 
accepted as conclusive of man’s presence in America 
in glacial times. The rise of a more critical spirit in 
archzologiec geology and the application of more rig- 
orous criteria have, however, disclosed weaknesses both 
in the evidence and in the interpretations put upon it, 
with the result that man’s antiquity in America is a 
more open question to-day than it was thought to be 
fifteen years ago.’’ 

The principal reason why this change took place 
was that it was discovered that there were two stages 
in the manufacture of flint implements; the first stage 
took place in the glacial gravels, where the materials 
for making these implements were largely found; there 
they were chipped more or less and the chips and poor 
specimens were left in the gravels. These chips and 
refuse parts were at first believed to. represent man’s 
first efforts at shaping flint implements. This has been 
found to be a mistake, and it has been ‘learned that 
these things were only the first stage of manufacture. 

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It has been found that after this crude shaping at the 
gravel beds, the implements were finished at home or 
in other places of manufacture. 

They further say (p. 266, etce.): ‘‘Sources of good 
evidence. There are two classes of formations in which 
good evidences of glacial man, if there was such man 
in America, are to be sought; viz., (1) in undisturbed 
till-sheets below horizons affected by surface intrusion, 
and (2) in interglacial beds where overlain by till and 
protected from all assignable sources of subsequent 
intermixture. Both these classes of beds have yielded 
fossils of other forms of life, and these alone have 
been seriously considered in the usual studies of the 
life of the glacial and interglacial stages. These beds 
have not yet yielded human relics in America, but they 
should do so in time, if man lived here in glacial or 
interglacial times.’? As to man’s appearance in - 
Europe, they say: ‘‘On the whole, present evidence 
seems to justify the conclusion of most European 
archeological geologists, that man was present in 
central Europe during the latter part of the 
glacial period, and perhaps even earlier in the 
period.’’ 

The following estimates have been given as to the 
length of time that has elapsed since the glacial period 
in America: 

Prof. George Frederick Wright. 7,000 to 10,000 years. 


Prof. James Prestwich........ 8,000 to 10,000 years. 
TPt eee) AINCS GTO b's, > not more than 11,000 years. 
Prof. 8S. D. Salisbury and Dr. 

PSHE, Fi Oona as eta oes 7,000 to 10,000 years. 
Dre Wiis “ANATOWR ¢ 0's. oe ee os 5,000 to 7,500 years. 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





Prof. Salisbury, State Geological 

SULEVOV, VINE er oe tnienes enn aun 6,000 to 10,000 years. 
Prof. Alexander Winchell ..... 7,000 to 11,000 years. 

Considering the above estimates by these men of 
high standing in archeological geology, and their con- 
clusions after a careful study of the facts, we think 
that we are justified in drawing the conclusion that 
man has been here but a few thousand years at most. 
And yet Professor Gesell announces triumphantly .in 
the most dogmatic way in his book, written especially 
for the’ instruction of teachers, that man has been on 
the earth many millenniums and probably millions of 
years. And this is all done in the name of ‘‘modern 
science.’’ It is taught as if it were known to be true; 
taught to the thousands who have neither the oppor- 
tunity, the ability nor the means to investigate this 
matter for themselves. One of the greatest values of 
true science is that it rests on known facts and is free 
from dogmatism. The teaching in this book, however, 
to which I refer, is purely dogmatic, and therefore lacks 
both the facts of science and the scientific spirit, and 
is, consequently, worthless. Why the public money 
should be spent to propagate this kind of teaching is 
beyond my imagination. I believe that the public, 
when informed, will see that this teaching which is 
being protected by the word ‘‘science,’’ but which lacks 
entirely the character of true science, will be banished 
from our public schools. 

Professor Gesell accepts without question the Dar- 
winian theory. He says that Romanes called the prin- 
ciple of natural selection ‘‘the most important idea 
ever conceived by man.’’ Romanes makes it clear in 
what he has written that the theory of natural selection 

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can not account for evolution. The theory has been 
largely repudiated by leading scientists, 

St. George Mivart, of the University College, Ken- 
sington, says: ‘‘With regard to the conception as put 
forward by Mr. Darwin, I can not truly characterize 
it except by an epithet I employ with great reluctance. 
I weigh my words, and have present to my mind the 
many distinguished naturalists who have accepted the 
notion, and yet I can not eall it anything but a puerile 
hypothesis.’’ 

Professor Fleischmann, of Erlanger, one of the 
recent converts to anti-Darwinism, says: ‘‘The Darwin- 
ian theory of descent has not a single fact to confirm 
it in the realm of nature. It is not the result of scien- 
tific research, but purely the product of the imagina- 
tion.’’ 

Prof. Ernst Haeckel, a most extreme materialistic 
evolutionist, bewails the fact that he has been left 
standing almost alone. He says: ‘‘Most modern inves- 
tigators of science have come to the conclusion that the 
doctrine of evolution, and particularly Darwinism, is 
an error and can not be maintained.’’ He then enu- 
merates the names of a number of scientists who have 
changed their views as to this subject. Dr. E. Dennert, 
Goette, Edward von Hartmann, Edward Hoppe, Pro- 
fessors Paulson and Rutemeyer, W. Max Wundt and 
Zoeckler, the last two of whom he calls ‘‘the bold and 
talented scientists’? who have abandoned the views of 
Darwin, though there was a time when they advocated 
them. 

Dr. Goette, the Strasburg professor, has published 
in the Unschau (1903) a natural history of Darwinism, 
which he says has passed through four stages; namely, 

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THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





‘‘(1) the beginnings, when it was received with great 
enthusiasm; (2) the period when it flourished and 
found general acceptance; (3) the period of transition 
and sober second thought, when its principles and 
teachings were called into question; (4) the final 
period, upon which the scientific world has just entered, 
and when its days will evidently soon be numbered.’’ 

Edward von Hartmann also says that Darwinism 
has passed through four stages, which he indicates by 
giving dates, and says that the opposition ‘‘gradually 
swelled into a great chorus of voices, aiming at the 
overthrow of the Darwinian theory. In the first decade 
of the twentieth century it has become apparent that 
the days of Darwinism are numbered. Among its latest. 
opponents are such savants as Eimer, Gustav Wolf, 
DeVries, Hoocke, Von Wellstein, Fleischmann, Reinke, 
and many others.”’ 

Professor Zoeckler, of the University of Greifswald, 
says ‘‘that the claim that the hypothesis of descent is 
secured scientifically must most decidedly be denied.’’ 

Dr. E. Dennert says: ‘‘A survey of the field shows 
that Darwinism in its old form is becoming a matter 
of history, and that we are actually witnessing its 
death-struggle.’’ 

Prof. Wilhelm Wundt, of Leipsic, who stands at the 
head of German psychologists, and in his earlier life 
supported evolution and wrote books in its favor, later 
characterized those writings as ‘‘the crime’’ of his 
youth that would take him all the rest of his life to 
explain. 

Professor Coulter, of the University of Chicago, 
writing against the natural selection theory of Darwin, 
says: ‘‘(1) It is generally believed that acquired char- 

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acters are not inherited. (2) The slight variations used 
by the theory of natural selection can not be continued. 
by continuous selection beyond the boundary of the 
species. (3) Forms preserved by artificial selection 
revert. (4) The selection among such slight variations 
is one that can have no decided advantage.’’ 

Dr. Ethridge, of the British Museum, one of 
England’s most famous experts in fossilology, says: 
‘‘In all this great museum there is not a particle of 
evidence of transmutation of species. Nine-tenths of 
the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded 
on observation and wholly unsupported by fact. This 
museum is full of proofs to the utter falsity of their 
views.”’ 

‘‘Prof. Lionel 8. Beale, physiologist, microscopist, 
and professor of anatomy and pathology in King’s 
College, London, stands to-day with Lord Kelvin at 
the head of English scientists, and in this special field 
is almost without a peer in the world. While address- 
ing the Victoria Institute of London the last of June, 
1908, he employed the following words: ‘The idea of 
any relation between the non-living, by a gradual ad- 
vance from lifeless matter to the lowest forms of life, 
and so onwards to the higher and more complex, has 
not the slightest evidence from any facts of any section 
of living nature of which anything is known. Man is 
man from the earliest period of his existence as a 
structureless germ, and there is no evidence that he has 
descended from, or is, or was, in any way especially 
related to any other organism in nature through evolu- 
tion or by any other process. In support of all natu- 
ralistic conjectures concerning man’s origin, there is 
not at this time a shadow of scientific evidence.’ ”’ 

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THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





Professor Beale again says: ‘‘The life-power, mind 
and intellect of man make it certain that he is a being 
absolutely distinct from all other organisms in living 
nature. But more than this, the action of those 
bioplasts and tissues belonging to man’s nervous 
system can not be compared with anything else in 
nature; from which we, perhaps, may be able to 
deduce what is man’s true place and his relation to 
his Creator.’’ 

Prof. John §. Newbury has shown that not one 
““new species of flora has appeared on earth since the 
appearance of those that followed the great ice era.’’ 
He also says: ‘‘When, therefore, all these facts and the 
laws that govern them are taken into account, one is 
justified in saying that it is doubtful if at any time in 
the world’s history there has been a theory that has 
gained so great popularity with such an unsubstantial 
basis as that of the evolution of man from the lower 
orders.’’ 

The Engis skull, perhaps the oldest known, is, ac- 
cording to Professor Huxley, ‘‘a fair average skull, 
which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might 
have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage.’’ 

Wallace says: ‘‘But what is still more extraordi- 
nary, the few remains yet known of prehistoric man do 
not indicate any material diminution of the size of the 
prain-case.’’ . 

Le Conte says: ‘‘The earliest men yet found are in 
no sense connecting links between man and ape. The 
Mentone skull is of average or more than average size, 
while the Neanderthal skull, which is also very ancient, 
is of lower type, but is in no respect intermediate be- 
tween man and ape, being truly human.”’ 

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EVOLUTION AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 


‘‘Professor Virchow, of Berlin, who was styled the 
‘foremost chemist of the globe,’ and who was the high- 
est German authority in physiology, said: ‘Jt is all 
nonsense. It can not be proved by science that man 
descended from the ape or from any other animal. 
Since the announcement of the theory, all real scien- 
ific knowledge has proceeded in the opposite direction. 
The attempt to find the transition from animal to man 
has ended in total failure.’ Virchow went so far as to 
denounce the theory as dangerous to the state, and 
demand that rt be excluded from the schools.’’ 

This demand by Virchow was wise, for teaching the 
evolution of man from the brute is but the culmination 
of the fundamental principle of the doctrine of evolu- 
tion that ‘‘might is right.’’ The practical effect of 
this doctrine in the teaching of Germany has shown 
itself appallingly in the brutal conduct of her soldiers 
during the last four years. It harmonizes well with 
‘‘German Kultur,’’ and with the practical atheism that 
evidently prevails among her rulers, and largely among 
her masses. It has come to pass that their evolved 
‘‘superman’’ is only an incarnate devil, which the 
Christian world has been compelled to crush beneath 
its heel. He will be cast out forever. The deification 
of physical power has had its last chance, and failed. 
What the prophet said long ago is good for all time: 
‘‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith 
Jehovah of hosts.’’ 

This suggests one of the chief dangers of the theory 
of evolution; namely, that to many minds it seems that 
God is not needed in the process. And so it has come 
to pass that a large per cent. of those who accept the 
theory are practically atheists, and treat with contempt 

73 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





the Bible as being the revealed will of God to man. 
That a man may be both a cosmic evolutionist and a 
theist is perfectly evident, but he may be these and 
not a Christian. I have discussed this in another 
chapter. 

What of Pithecanthropus erectus, the erect monkey- 
man? ‘‘In September, 1891, Dubois, a Dutch physi- 
clan, discovered a tooth on the island of Java, about 
forty-five feet below the surface of the earth; one 
month later he found the roof of a skull about three 
feet from where he had found the tooth, and in August, 
1892, he found a thigh-bone forty-five feet farther 
away, and, later on, another tooth. A year or two 
later the world’s famous zoologists met at Leyden, and 
among other things examined these remains. Ten of 
these leading scientists concluded that they were noth- 
ing but the bones of an ape, seven held that they were 
those of a man, and seven concluded that they were 
really the missing link connecting man and the ape.”’ 
Since that time Prof. D. G. Cunningham, of Dublin, 
one of the highest authorities in Great Britain. on ques- 
tions of comparative anatomy, thinks it probable that 
these different bones do not belong to the same animal; 
that a part of them are those of a monkey or baboon, 
and a part of them human. ‘‘Professor Virchow con- 
sidered the specimen to be pathologie.’’ 

These remains are the joy of the evolutionist. From 
these bones casts have been made, and pictures, and 
heralded to the world as representing the ‘‘missing 
link.’’? Professor Rutot, of Brussels, has artistically 
reconstructed the supposed monkey-man that possessed 
these bones. He has made a bust from his own imagi- 
nation and made it with all the accessories to render it 

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EVOLUTION AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 


attractive as a work of art, but disgustingly beastly 
from a human point of view. And so men who are 
panting to find the ‘‘missing link’’ accept this with 
avidity. It might, however, be well to make haste 
slowly along this line, and to wait till the leading ar- 
cheologists, zoologists and comparative anatomists come 
to some agreement as to the standing of Pithecanthro- 
pus. This they have not done. The testimony of most 
of the men cited above was given years after they 
had knowledge of the discovery of Pithecanthropus. 

‘At the last convention of anthropologists in 
Vienna, Virchow confirmed what he had previously 
said, in these words: ‘The attempt to find the transition . 
from animal to man has ended in total failure. The 
middle link has not been found and will not be 
found. Man is not descended from the ape. It has 
been proved beyond a doubt that during the past five 
thousand years there has been no noticeable change in 
raankind.’ ”’ 

I have shown elsewhere that the theory of evolution 
necessarily involves spontaneous generation. Prof. 
Lionel Beale says further as to this: ‘‘There is not a 
particle of living matter of any kind which can be ex- 
plained except on the view that it depends upon God. 
The living particles themselves, and their action during 
life, can only be reasonably accounted for by attribut- 
ing them to power created, sustained and regulated 
from the beginning by the living God. The infinite, 
designing, directing, sustaining power of the eternal 
God, as it seems to me, looking from the science side 
enly, must be acknowledged in every kind of living 
matter and at every period of life.’’ 

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THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





Dr. Bruner Bey, speaking of the most ancient 
skulls yet discovered, says: ‘‘They surpass in size the 
average of modern European skulls, while the symmet- 
rical form compares favorably with the skulls of many 
of the most civilized nations of modern times.’’ 

Prof. Pierre Paul Broca says of the celebrated Cro- 
Magnon skull, which belongs to the earliest stone age: 
‘“The great volume of the brain, the development of the 
frontal region, the fine elliptical profile of the anterior 
portion of the skull, and the orthognathous form of the 
upper facial region are incontestable evidence of supe- 
riority and are characteristics that usually are found 
only in civilized nations.”’ 

Professor Dana, in his manual of geology, says: 
‘‘Seience has no explanation of the origin of life. The 
living organism, instead of being a product of physical 
forces, controls these forces for its higher forms, func- 
tions and purposes. Its introduction was the grandest 
event in the world’s early history.’’ 

Professor Beale says: ‘‘There is a gulf between life 
and non-life that is unfathomable, and I can not believe 
it will ever be bridged.”’ 

Professor Tyndall says: ‘‘If asked whether science 
has solved, or is likely to solve, the problem of the 
universe in our day, I must shake my head in doubt. 
Behind and above and around us the real mystery of 
the universe lies unsolved, and, as far as we are con- 
cerned, is incapable of solution. JI share Virchow’s 
opinion that the theory of evolution, in its complete 
form, involves the assumption that at some period or 
other of the earth’s history there occurred what would 
now be called spontaneous generation; but I agree with 
him that the proofs of it are wanting. I hold also with 

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Virchow that the failures have been so lamentable that 
the doctrine is utterly discredited.’’ 

Tt will be remembered that Tyndall had made nearly 
a thousand experiments, using organic infusions, to 
determine whether or not spontaneous generation would 
take place, and they failed to prove the doctrine. The 
evolutionist must accept this doctrine which is entirely 
destitute of facts to support it. 

In 1903, Lord Kelvin said in an address: ‘‘Forty 
years ago I asked Liebig, walking somewhere in the 
country, if he believed that the grass and flowers which 
we saw around us grew by mere chance force. He 
answered: ‘No: no more than I can believe that a book 
of botany describing them could grow by mere chemical 
force.’ ... ‘It is not in dead matter that men live, move 
and have their being, but in a creative and directive 
power which science compels us to accept as an article of 
faith. Is there anything so absurd as to believe that a 
number of atoms, by falling together of their own accord, 
could make a crystal, a microbe, or a living animal?’ ’’ 

Professor Agassiz, in his essay on classification, 
says: ‘‘Until it can be proven that matter ean think 
and feel and choose, I take the existence of thought, 
not our own, in nature, as proof of the existence in 
nature of a personal thinker not ourselves.’’ 

George J. Romanes, on whose shoulders, according 
to some, ‘‘fell the mantle of Darwin,’’ and who at one 
time was a chief supporter of Haeckel, wrote one of 
the strongest books against supernaturalism, but later 
he changed his views entirely and died in 1894 con- 
fessing his faith, not only in the providence of God, 
but also the deity of Christ. He returned to the church 
before his death. 

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THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





Huxley made the following statement in his ‘‘Life 
and Letters’’ in 1908: ‘‘Science seems to me to teach 
in the highest and strongest manner the great truth 
that is embodied in the Christian conception of an 
entire surrender to the will of God.’’ 

Pasteur, one of the greatest scientists of all genera- 
tions, who saved to the world annually millions of dol- 
lars by investigating various germ diseases and pro- 
viding cultures for preventing the same, was a most 
devout believer. He wrote: ‘‘Posterity will one day 
laugh at the foolishness of modern materialistic philos- 
ophies. The more I study nature, the more I stand 
amazed at the works of the Creator.”’ 

Professor Townsend, of the University of Boston, 
said: ‘‘Except for a mind endowed with a conscience 
at the beginning, and with which organic evolution has 
nothing to do, and had not religion, especially the Jewish 
and Christian with their inspiring and uplifting power 
come to the aid of the human race, mankind would long 
since have disappeared from the face of the earth.’’ 

As previously indicated, Dr. Goette has stated the 
four stages through which Darwinism has passed in 
Germany, the second of which was ‘‘the period it 
flourished and found general acceptance.’’ It seems 
that America is largely in this period now, and it is to 
be hoped that it is entering on the third period, which 
is ‘‘the period of transition and of sober second 
thought, when its principles and teachings are being 
called into question.’’ It is evident that a large num- 
ber who eagerly accept it do so because they imagine 
that it places them in the forefront of scientific prog- 
ress, and not because they have any real knowledge of 
the subject. The multitude are being led like sheep 

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by dogmatists, who in turn have received the theory 
from other dogmatists, and they imagine that growth 
in numbers of ignorant supporters adds evidence to the 
truth of the theory. 

The time has come when men simply assume the 
truth of the theory of evolution. In a recent work 
(1917) by H. F. Osborn, ‘‘The Origin and Evolution 
of Life,’’ the author says: ‘‘In this review we need not 
devote any time or space to any fresh arguments for 
the truth of evolution. The demonstration of evolution 
as a universal law of living nature is the greatest intel- 
lectual achievement of the nineteenth century... . 
Evolution has outgrown the rank of a theory.’’ 

And yet in the face of these statements the author 
devotes the first half of his book trying to prove that 
the ‘‘origin and evolution of life’’ have taken place by 
“spontaneous generation, and he fully realizes that this 
must be proved because it is a necessary step in the 
process of evolution, and this must be done before it 
can become anything but a theory. 

But the author admits that when trying to estab- 
lish this doctrine on a basis of facts he is only in the 
region of speculation. He says: ‘‘All speculation of 
the origin of life, fruitless as it may at first appear, has 
the advantage that it compels a sudden reversal of 
the naturalists’ point of view, for we are forced to 
work from energy up into form, because, at the begin- 
ning, form is nothing; energy, everything.’’ (Italics 
mine.) Again, he says: ‘‘The more modern scientific 
opinion is that life arose from a recombination of forces 
pre-existing in the cosmos.’’ That sounds very much 
like materialism. He expresses his own views as fol- 
lows: ‘‘We may express our own opinion, based upon 

6 79 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION ~ 





the application of uniformitarian evolutionary princi- 
ples, that when life appeared on the earth somé energies 
pre-existing in the cosmos were brought into relation 
with the chemical elements already existing.’’ He does 
not, however, claim to be a materialist, for he says that 
the impression that the cosmos makes upon us is ‘‘that 
of limitless and ordered energy.’’ He does not, how- 
ever, at any time recognize God as the controlling 
power. He says: ‘‘The traditional opinion is that some- 
thing new entered this, and possibly other planets, with 
the appearance of life; this view is also involved in all 
the older and newer hypotheses which group around 
the idea of vitalism, or the existence of specific, dis- 
tinctive and adaptive energies in living matter—ener- 
gies which do not occur in lifeless matter.’’ 

This theistic view the author does not accept. In- 
stead of this, however, he searches among the known 
forces of nature in vain for the origin of life, and 
assumes that forces exist in nature that can produce 
spontaneous generation. In speaking of the evolution 
of the living world, he says: ‘‘Such evolution, we re- 
peat with emphasis, is not like that of the chemical 
elements or of the stars; the evolutionary process now 
takes an entirely new and different direction. Although 
it may arise through combinations of pre-existing ener- 
gies, it is essentially constructive, and apparently, 
though not actually, creative; it is continually giving 
birth to an infinite variety of new forms and functions 
which never appeared in the universe before.’’ The 
author here accepts the evident fact that, if evolution 
took place, it changed its course as it advanced from 
the inorganic to the organic world—that it became con- 
structive instead of destructive, and seemed to be 

80 


EVOLUTION AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 





‘‘creative.’’ He attributes to the forces of nature the 
upward steps which the Christian attributes to God. 

This book by Osborn contains many important facts, 
but it utterly fails, as all others have failed, to give us 
any light as to the origin of living things on the earth. 
It simply, as is the custom now, assumes that spontane- 
ous generation and evolution are facts of science, and 
deals with them accordingly. It is a book that will be 
misunderstood by most people and will prove harmful 
to many. 

“*Prehistoric Man and His Story,’’ by G. F. Scott 
Elliott, has recently (1915) been published. The 
author, as is common with writers of this type, assumes 
evolution as a fact. The frontispiece is an imaginary 
reconstructed picture of Pithecanthropus erectus by 
Professor Rutot, of Brussels. Professor Rutot has not 
confined himself to the reconstruction of Pithecan- 
thropus, but he has used his artistic talent in recon- 
structing from various ancient skulls imaginary beings 
who, when living, possessed these skulls. These pic- 
tures are printed in various books as if they were true, 
and widely circulated, resulting in the misinformation 
of the public. There is no way by which the public 
can be more easily misled than by means of such pic- 
tures. I do not see any reason why Professor Rutot 
should not extend his imagination to the construction 
of a complete group of pictures joining monkey and 
man. I feel that if he will do so the group will be very 
popular. This will only be in harmony with Profes- 
sor Gesell’s advice to launch out boldly in the use of 
the imagination in these matters. Professor Elliott has 
no difficulty in assuming, without proving, that man 
has been here hundreds of thousands of years. This 

81 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





assumption is absolutely necessary in the interest of 
the theory, and so it is easily made. It is evident that 
if man has been evolved from a lower animal, the time 
required was immense. It is a fact, here as elsewhere, 
that all along the line of evolution the infinite number 
of gaps that must be filled, in order to account for 
living things, are freely filled by the imagination. If 
I were to call evolution a science at all, it would be the 
science of the imagination. It is a theory that leads 
people to imagine that they know things that they know 
not, and never ean know. Books of this class are insid- 
ious in their influence. They are the more readily mis- 
leading because they claim to be scientific, and every 
young person of ability, especially, wants to conform to 
science, 

The religious public looks on with indifference while 
their children are being taught this doctrine, not know- 
ing that it is a theory that undermines the Bible and 
all revealed religion. There is a great desire in many 
places to have a portion of the Bible read daily in our 
public schools. It has been excluded from the schools 
largely because religious people have not agreed with 
regard to it. If these people can not agree in this, why 
should they agree to the teaching of the theory of evo- 
lution, which annihilates the Bible as the book of 
authority in the Christian religion? I am aware of the 
answer that is given to the above; viz., the scientific 
world has accepted the doctrine of evolution; its truth 
is no longer an open question, and so we accept it and 
conform our teaching to it. The scientific world, in 
this case, is composed, for the most part, of people who 
have little knowledge of the facts bearing on the theory, 
and have received it from dogmatic teachers. The 

82 


EVOLUTION AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 





great majority of capable men involved in this, as 
shown by statistics, accept the theory on the basis of 
naturalism and are unbelievers, and, of course, do not 
accept miracles. The man who conforms to this theory 
will find that, for the most part, he is following the 
teaching of confirmed infidels. They do not accept 
Christ as set forth in the New Testament. Again I ask, 
Why should a theory that necessarily destroys the Bible 
as the book of authority in religion be taught in our 
public schools? 

There are more than enough sciences based upon 
most important practical facts which can furnish all 
material for a real scientific training in the laboratory, 
that is needed. Chemistry, physics, physiology, hygiene, 
and various other branches of science that are com- 
monly taught, when taught in the right way, furnish 
the average pupil abundant training in science, and 
more than he can generally take. Why should intelli- 
gent pupils be compelled to pursue that will-o’-the-wisp, 
evolution, as if it were real science? 


§3 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





V 
NATURAL SELECTION 


WILL now refer briefly to natural selection, because 

it is the chief thing relied on in support of the doc- 
trine of evolution. It is well known that the rate of 
increase of any living thing is in a geometrical ratio. 
If all the seeds of a single maple-tree and its progeny 
eould grow and produce trees, it would be but a few 
years till the world would be crowded with maple- 
trees. If all the roe of a single codfish were to hatch 
and live to maturity, the oceans would soon be crowded 
with codfish. But they do not. 

It is evident, therefore, that nature has some means 
of limiting the number of organisms that arrive at 
maturity. As to whether a plant or an animal shall 
survive or not depends upon its inherent forces, food, 
protection from enemies, climate and freedom from 
accidents. An adequate supply of food is, perhaps, the 
principal one of these factors. 

The number of seeds produced by plants in a forest 
forbids that each seed produce a.plant that can grow 
to maturity. A great multitude of them may sprout, 
but will die for lack of food and sunshine. Their older 
competitors, with roots deep in the earth, destroy the 
seedlings. 

The animal kingdom is limited by the quantity of 
vegetable food. All animals are ultimately dependent 

84 


NATURAL SELECTION 





on the vegetable world. The flesh-eaters live on the 
vegetable feeders. All living things in a state of nature 
are held in check by the limited supply of food. If 
herbivorous animals fail, carnivorous animals starve; 
if vegetable food fails, all animals perish for lack of 
food. 

With plenty of food where no enemies exist, a 
species will multiply beyond bounds. The English hare 
in New Zealand and Australia, with no carnivorous 
enemies to prey upon them, multiplied so rapidly that 
in some regions they ate the grass to such an extent as 
to render sheep-raising unprofitable, and by their ex- 
cessive numbers would finally limit their own species 
to the available supply of food. The number of animals 
in most regions has been limited by the struggle be- 
tween the carnivorous and the herbivorous animals. 
There is ceaseless struggle for existence among all liy- 
ing things in the world, and generally but a small per 
cent. of organisms born arrive at the age of maturity. 
The means which nature uses to limit the number of 
organisms Mr. Darwin has called “‘natural selection,’’ 
and Herbert Spencer calls ‘‘survival of the fittest.’’ 
Mr. Darwin says that the offspring is never exactly like 
the parent, and that some of the offspring will be born 
with variations that are favorable to their existence, 
and so they survive and the less favored perish. He 
says: ‘‘Natural selection acts solely through the preser- 
vation of variations in some way advantageous, and 
consequently endure.’’ Again he says: ‘‘We see noth- 
ing of these slow changes in process, until the hand of 
time has marked the lapse of ages, and then so imper- 
fect is our view in long past geological ages, that we 

85 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





see only that the forms of life are now different from 
what they formerly were.’’ 

Why do the few live and the great majority perish? 
If we consider a little in detail a few cases, we may 
better understand the process among plants. A thistle, 
for example, may produce a thousand seeds which are 
equally perfect. The wind may scatter most of these 
far and wide. One hundred take root and grow, and 
nine hundred perish in various ways. The birds may 
destroy some; others may fall on stony ground; others 
are carried to places where, on account of other 
growths, thistles can not thrive; and they are disposed 
of in many ways by the winds. The seeds that did not 
grow were just as perfect and as well adapted to grow 
as those that found favorable soil and reproduced. The 
thistles that grew produced another crop of seeds which 
were scattered in all directions by the changing winds, 
and a small per cent. grew and reproduced more seeds 
with down. 

The fact that some grew, and others, equally per- 
fect, did not, was due solely to fortuitous circumstances 
—to accident, as we commonly express it. Those that 
lived were no better adapted to reproduce than were 
those that perished. The plants that grew from the few 
thistle seeds were not all equally fortunate in their 
growth. Those that had the best soil and the fewest 
competitors grew largest and produced more seeds, and 
the winds seattered the seed again. 

If we try to apply ‘‘survival of the fittest’’ to these 
thistles, we ask, In what did the fittest consist? We 
can only make the empty answer that they survived 
because circumstances were more favorable to them — 
than to those that perished. 

86 


NATURAL SELECTION 





If we consider the hundred thousand perfect seeds 
that fall from a maple-tree in a single season, perhaps 
not a hundred may grow to be trees. The winds scatter 
these seeds more or less, and we can imagine that a 
less perfect seed might lodge in a fruitful soil and 
become a tree, while the better seeds failed. In this 
case, nature, by supposition, selected the poorer speci- 
men, which no doubt sometimes happens. It was not 
a case of ‘‘survival of the fittest.’’ The fitness was not 
in the seed itself, but in the external conditions. Fit- 
test is not at all applicable to this and similar cases. 
Nor is natural selection to be applied here, for that 
assumes a special fitness in the organism itself, adapt- 
ing it the better to external conditions. And so with 
plants in general. Of course the maples in a state of 
nature are in competition with the other species of the 
forest, and with the animal world. In the native forest, 
little would depend on the relative value of the seeds 
of the tree, for it is evident that the differences would 
be inappreciable; but a large amount would depend on 
soil, sunshine and moisture available for growth. The 
favorable differences in certain seeds, if there were any, 
yrould be negligible, but such inherent differences must 
exist, otherwise natural selection would have nothing 
on which to act. As to how the innumerable species of 
plants could have originated from some simple original 
beginning, is beyond all imagination. The known per- 
manence of the many existing species with practically 
no change, and the sudden appearance in the cretaceous 
of the angiosperms, the highest group of plants, without 
any known precursors, lend force to the idea that 
plants have not been evolved. If they have been 
evolved in such vast numbers of species, the forces of 

87 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





evolution in them have been active far beyond anything. 
that is now known of plants. Chamberlin and Salis- 
bury say: ‘‘The eastern and central America angio- 
sperms, including both monocotyledons and dicotyle- 
dons, appeared early in the period, and developed so 
rapidly that by the beginning of the next period they 
seem to have overrun the continent. This is one of the 
most radical evolutions in the history of the plant king- 
dom. ... The earliest forms are ancestral, but not really 
primitive, and throw little light on the derivation of 
the group. The majority bear definite resemblances to 
modern genera and some are referred to living genera. 
Before the end of the period, figs, magnolias, tulip- 
trees, laurels, cinnamon and other forms referred to 
modern genera, but not to modern species.’’ 

It will be noticed that natural selection depends on 
a change in the organism itself, and that it takes place 
with extreme slowness. Now, it is evident that this 
slow process of imaginary changes is the method by 
which all living and extinct organisms, according to 
Darwin’s teaching, have been produced by evolution 
from some simple primordial cell or cells. He does not 
claim that it is the sole cause, but the principal cause, 
of evolution. Darwin’s son, in writing his biography, 
says: ‘‘We can not prove that a single species has 
changed.’’ And yet the evolutionist claims that all 
species have been formed by changes of other species. 
In applying his theory of evolution to the eyes of the 
vertebrates, Darwin said: ‘‘The eye, to this day, gives 
me a cold shudder.’’ 

Professor Coulter says, with regard to natural selec- 
tion, that ‘‘the slight variations used by the theory of 
natural selection can not be extended by continuous 

88 


NATURAL SELECTION 





selection beyond the boundary of the species. ... The 
selection among such slight variations is one that can 
have no decided advantages. ”’ 

Professor Romanes says ‘‘that a large proportional 
number of specific, as well as of higher taxonomic, char- 
acters could not be thus preserved.’’ 

Nearly all of evolution belongs to the geological 
record. Man’s experiments with plants and animals 
are confined mostly to those that have been domesti- 
eated. It is soon evident that man’s selections of varia- 
tions, resulting in certain further changes of plants and 
animals, give entirely different results from those in a 
state of nature. 

Mr. Darwin spent much time in studying domestic 
pigeons, of which there are many varieties. By cross- 
breeding varieties which are widely different in appear- 
ance, he concluded they had all been derived from a 
species of rock-pigeons. He claimed that the varieties 
of domestic pigeons are as widely different from each 
other as are many recognized species of birds—that, in 
fact, they were incipient species. This is the difficulty 
with respect to regarding them as species. When 
closely related species cross at all, as they sometimes 
do, their offspring are not fertile—they can not repro- 
duce their kind. Among domestic animals the mule is 
an example. Darwin says: ‘‘Now, it is difficult, per- 
haps impossible, to bring forward one case of the hybrid 
offspring of two animals clearly distinct, being per- 
fectly fertile.’’ This ought not to be, since the varie- 
ties from which closely related species were formed 
were more fertile when crossed than before. Why 
should the species that were formed from varieties that 
were perfectly fertile when crossed, cease to be cross- 

89 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


ee 


fertile? In other words, how can varieties that are 
perfectly cross-fertile become species that are cross- 
sterile with the parent form and with each other in the’ 
form of new species? Mr. Romanes cut the Gordian 
knot here by assuming that the cross-sterility between 
the new form and the parent was due to birth, and for 
this some have given him much eredit. But I do not 
know of a more unwarranted assumption than this in 
the whole range of evolution. The difficulty is funda- 
mental and has not been solved. 

The fact with regard to the domestic pigeons is that 
all the varieties cross and produce fertile offspring. 
Crossing even renders them more fertile than they 
would otherwise be. It is admitted that if the different 
varieties were permitted to mingle freely, a common 
form of pigeons would be the result. The varieties have 
not been produced by natural selection, but by man’s 
selection. Man has for generations of the life of the 
pigeon separated and kept separate the birds that pos- 
sessed certain peculiarities that he desired them to 
possess, and has thus increased the structures that he 
sought. Nature has no way to separate birds that pos- 
sess some peculiarity of structure. Any variation is 
lost by the free mingling that occurs in a state of 
nature. The wild pigeon of the United States, that a 
few years ago abounded and migrated in flocks of many 
thousands, was quite uniform in its structure. There 
was no tendency among these widely scattered birds to 
form species. 

The various breeds of domestic chickens freely min- 
ele when permitted to do so, and produce fertile 
offspring. The differences have been brought about 
‘by man’s selection. We never fail to recognize 
90 


NATURAL SELECTION 





them as chickens, whatever the breed. And so man’s 
aid in selecting and separating has helped to form 
varieties of all our domestic animals. But Nature 
has nothing that she can substitute for man’s work, 
for she has no means of separating variations; they 
are inevitably lost by mingling with the common 
forms. 

As to artificial and natural selection, Spencer says: 
‘‘They are analogous only within certain narrow limits, 
and in the great majority of cases natural selection is 
utterly incapable of doing that which artificial selection 
does.’’ 

It is evident that if a species forms a variety that 
becomes a new species, certain things must oceur during 
the process: First, that a favorable variation should 
occur in nature; second, that the individuals possessing 
the variation should be separated from the other indi- 
viduals of the species to prevent merging by mingling 
with forms that do not possess the variation; third, that 
a number of individuals possessing the variation should 
get together in order that the variation might be propa- 
gated; fourth, be cross-sterile with the parent forms, 
but be fertile with each other. I need not remark that 
these difficulties have not been overcome, by means of 
very slight changes through many generations. If 
Romanes’ claim that cross-sterility between parent and 
offspring is due to birth, then it is evident that on 
account of the great number of slight useful changes, 
cross-sterility must happen at almost every step all the 
way along the line in order that the variations may 
survive. But we know that this is not true—we do not 
know that it takes place at all. Hence this assumption 
is worthless. 

91 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





Darwin says that cross-sterility ‘‘could not have 
been effected through natural selection, for it could 
have been of no direct advantage to an individual 
animal to breed badly with another individual of 
different variety and thus leave few offspring; con- 
sequently such individuals could not have been 
preserved or selected.’’ Here, then, natural selection 
fails to account for facts that exist, and no adequate 
explanation has been given to dispose of the difficulty. 
Yet this must be explained, if evolution has taken 
place. 

Spencer wrote several articles on ‘‘The Inadequacy 
of Natural Selection.’’ Recognizing the failure of natu- 
ral selection to fully account for evolution, he supple- 
ments it by the use of ‘‘aecquired characters.’’ He 
says: ‘‘Either there has been inheritance of acquired 
characters or there has been no evolution.’’ He was 
one of the ablest men who wrote upon the subject, and 
he decided that inheritance of acquired characters was 
the decisive thing involved. He says that ‘‘the neo- 
Darwinians, however, do not admit this cause at all.’’ 
He also says: ‘‘See, then, how the cause stands. Natu- 
ral selection, or survival of the fittest, is almost exclu- 
sively operative throughout the vegetable world, and 
throughout the lower animal world, characterized by 
relative passivity. But with ascent to higher types of 
animals, its effects are in increasing degrees involved 
with those produced by inheritance of acquired charac- 
ters, until, in animals of complex structures, inherit- 
ance of acquired characters becomes an important, if 
not the chief, cause of evolution.’’ 

In the above, Spencer expresses the idea that natu- 
ral selection is the dominant factor in evolution among 

92 


/ 


NATURAL SELECTION 





plants and the lower forms of animal life. Plants are 
passive, and many of the lower forms of animals are 
fixed and almost passive. I have called attention to the 
fact that if changes took place among them it would be 
_ due to external conditions and not to natural selection, 
for the reason that the small differences in the seeds 
would furnish no adequate ground for natural selection. 
The same would be true among the fixed forms among 
animals. If natural selection has not been the principal 
factor among the higher animals, and Spencer claims 
that it has not, then there is little room for it anywhere 
in evolution. 

As acknowledged by practically all evolutionists, 
natural selection will not account for the whole process 
of evolution, and it must be supplemented in various 
ways; as by correlation of growth, sexual selection, etc., 
all of which, in my opinion, are very defective. Many 
people accept evolution as a fact, but fail to indicate 
auy method by which it has taken place. It is left as 
a theory floating in the air. 

Professor Coulter, writing against natural selection, 
says: “‘It is generally believed that acquired characters 
are not inherited.’’ The changes of parts by gain or 
loss which the organism undergoes during its life are 
called acquired characters. Circumcision is an acquired 
character which the Jews have practiced for many 
generations, and yet they do not inherit it. The adult 
Hindoos acquire an antipathy to the use of meat, but 
their offspring do not inherit any such antipathy. Ears 
and noses of certain savages have been perforated for 
long periods, and yet the children are not born with 
these parts perforated. The evidence in favor of the 
inheritance of acquired characters is practically noth- 

93 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


a I A, 


ing. This being true, Herbert Spencer would not be 
classed as an evolutionist. 

Prof. E. D. Cope said in ‘‘The Primary Factors of 
Organic Evolution’’: ‘‘My aim will be to show, in the 
first place, that variations of character are the effect of 
physical causes; and, second, that such variations are 
inherited.’’ This entirely ignores natural selection, 
which is based on inherited characters, and bases it all 
on acquired characters, which are for the most part 
mechanical. There is no agreement as to the method 
of evolution among those who accept it as a fact. Even 
if the inheritance of acquired characters were true, it 
would not prevent merging, which would eliminate 
variations. 


PALEONTOLOGY 





VI 
PALEONTOLOGY 


HE subject of paleontology I have considered at 

considerable length in ‘‘Organie Evolution Con- 
sidered.’’ I take up the subject in a more limited way 
here, because I feel that some mention of it is necessary 
in this place. The length of the geological record since 
life began on the earth has been many millions of 
years. The deposit in water of more than a hundred 
thousand feet of stratified rocks, in natural ways, many 
of them containing fossils, since life began upon the 
earth, required a length of time that we can not esti- 
mate. 

It is claimed by evolutionists that the first living 
things were the simplest kinds of organisms, which were 
evolved by the action of resident cosmic forces upon 
certain forms of matter. One of the latest writers on 
the origin of living things, H. F. Osborn, writing from 
the ‘‘energy conception’’ of evolution, says ‘‘that when 
life appeared on the earth, some energies pre-existing 
in the cosmos were brought into relation with the chem- 
ical elements already existing.’’ This writer thinks 
that bacteria, all of which are microscopic in size, and 
some beyond the range of the microscope, were the first 
organisms on the earth. None of the bacteria have the 
structure of true cells; they are more simple in their 
structure. According to this, bacteria were the seeds 

7 95 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION | 





from which all organic beings, including man, subse- 
quently sprang. 

The general process of evolution under the form of 
a tree can readily be imagined. Most of the millions 
of species that compose this imaginary tree are dead. 
and buried in the geological record, and their remains 
have not been discovered. If we construct the tree of 
life in its complete form, as the theory of evolution 
demands, and begin with any species of animals or 
plants, living or extinct, we would be able to trace it 
back to bacteria as the first living ancestor. Most of 
the tree, if it existed, is buried in the geological forma- 
tions, while the living forms would be represented by 
the tips of the twigs above the surface. If, now, we 
erase the parts of this tree which of necessity existed 
and furnished evolution its physical continuity, we are 
obliged, in the first place, to erase the lower half or 
more of the tree of life as being absolutely unknown. 
It is not represented by any known fossils. Cham- 
berlin and Salisbury, in speaking of the oldest known 
fossils, say: ‘‘It is significant that the oldest definite 
fossils yet found are forms well up in the animal king- 
dom, and that they occur (in Montana) nine thousand 
feet below the unconformity between the Proterozoic 
and the Cambrian.’’ Also: ‘‘The best preserved forms 
are those of the Euripterus-like crustaceans.’’ Le Conte 
says: ‘‘At the end of the archean times—when the 
archean volume closed—we find only the lowest proto- 
zoon life. But with the opening of the next era, appar- 
ently with the first pages of the next volume, we find 
already the great types of structure except the verte- 
brata. And these not the lowest of each, as might have 
been expected, but already trilobites among the Articu- 

96 


PALEONTOLOGY 





lata and cephalopods among mollusks—animals which 
can hardly be regarded as lower than the middle of the 
animal scale.’’ Here, then, in the Primordial period, 
which is close to the bottom of fossil-bearing rocks, we 
find animals that are half-way up between bacteria and. 
man. This fact would indicate that previous to the 
“‘Kuripterus-like’’ forms of the Proterozoic period, 
‘“‘which are well up in the animal kingdom,’’ as much 
time had elapsed during which animals were being 
evolved which gave rise to the trilobites and cephalo- 
pods of the Primordial period as has elapsed since that 
period. During the long ages preceding the highly 
organized animals of the Proterozoic period, and during 
which animals of many forms were necessarily being 
evolved, if evolution was taking place, no fossils show- 
ing their existence have been found. I repeat that in 
erasing the parts of the tree of life that we have no 
remains of, we must rub out the whole lower half, 
covering many millions of years. And yet it is ad- 
mitted that rocks existed during this long period that 
might well contain fossil remains of mollusks, trilobites 
and other forms, if they existed. The first half of the 
geological record must be assumed to have existed, and 
that the fossils have been entirely destroyed. To reach 
the point in evolution where paleontology can have a 
solid footing in organic remains, two enormous assump- 
tions have been made: First, that by the process of evo- 
lution spontaneous generation has taken place; second, 
that animals and plants of many kinds existed during 
the first half of organic evolution, but that their re- 
mains have all been destroyed. There are no facts to 
justify either of these assumptions; and yet it is 
claimed that evolution has passed beyond the stage of 
97 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


aL 


theory, and is to be accepted as an established fact of 
science. 

The fossils of the Primordial period represent all 
the sub-kingdoms of animals except the vertebrates. If 
we strike from the upper half of the tree of life the 
forms that are not represented by known fossils, we 
erase nearly all of it, so that only scattered spots that 
do not even remind one of organic connection remain ; 
they do not suggest the possibility of a tree of life 
which would include all species of plants and animals. 
The so-called tree of life is an invention of the imagi- 
nation. | 

There has been little progress among the inverte- 
brates throughout the geological record, and yet the 
animals of the Primordial must have made rapid prog- 
ress in evolution during the first half of time in order 
to reach their condition in the Primordial. The ortho- 
ceras of this period, it has been claimed, belonged, per- 
haps, to the highest class of invertebrates. The rapid 
progress which it made prior to the Primordial and 
the little progress, if any, in structure which the class 
to which it belonged has made through all geological 
time are not consistent with each other. The same is 
true of the spiders and scorpions of the Paleozoic. They 
have existed through all the geological ages since their 
early introduction, without making perceptible prog- 
ress, yet they must have progressed rapidly through the 
preceding ages to obtain their highly organized complex 
structures. High up among the articulates were numer- 
ous genera and species of trilobites with compound 
eyes. They were numerous in the Primordial and con- 
tinued on through the Paleozoic, which includes most 
of tke known geological record, without making per- 

98 


PALEONTOLOGY 





ceptible progress. It is remarkable that animals which 
made such wonderful strides of progress during the 
first half of the time required for evolution should, as 
soon as they appeared, cease to progress during the 
many millions of years of the known record. Among 
the mollusks, some of the living lingula are closely like 
forms in the Primordial. The same is true of living 
forms of the lamellibranchs. The spiders and scorpions 
of the Silurian look closely like existing forms. The 
oldest known insects of the Paleozoic were highly 
organized, and insects may have culminated in size, if 
not in the number of species in the Carboniferous. 

Looking at the geological record as we know it, one 
is impressed with the fact that the oldest known forms 
of the invertebrates were high up in the scale of the 
classes that they represent, and that during all the 
geological ages of their existence they made little, if 
any, progress in structure. Considering the remains of 
all the fossil invertebrates known, with everywhere the 
absence of innumerable missing links which outnumber 
by a thousand-fold the known forms, we can discover 
no reason for the theory of evolution, nor for con- 
structing an imaginary tree of life to represent the 
process among the several sub-kingdoms of the inverte- 
brates. 

Dawson says that he examined more than two hun- 
dred species of Post-pliocene mollusks, and that they 
are identical with living species—that even the varieties 
are the same now that they were then. 

“*Pictet catalogues ninety-eight species of mammals 
which inhabited Europe in the Post-glacial period. Of 
these, fifty-seven still exist unchanged, and the re- 
mainder have disappeared. Not one of them ean be 

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THEISTIC EVOLUTION 

ee 
shown to have been modified into a new form, though 
some of them have been obliged, by changes of tempera- 
ture and other conditions, to remove into distant and 
now widely separated regions. Further, it would seem 
that all the existing European mammals extended back 
in geological time at least so far as man, so that since 
the Post-glacial period no new species have been intro- 
duced in any way.’’ 

Gray, in speaking of De Candolle’s conclusion as to 
the length of time that living species of oaks have ex- 
isted, says: ‘‘He accepts, and, by various considerations 
drawn from the geographical distribution of European 
Cupulifera, fortifies the conclusion—long ago arrived 
at by Edward Forbes—that the present species, and 
even some of their varieties, date back to about the 
close of the Tertiary epoch, since which time they have 
been subject to great and frequent changes of habita- 
tion, but without appreciable change of specific form 
or character; that is, without profounder changes than 
those within which a species of the present time is 
known to vary.’’ 

Considering the above examples of animals and 
plants, we would conclude that species are long-lived 
and unchangeable. There is no evidence among these 
that in a state of nature one species is changed into 
another. 

Romanes says of the geological record: ‘‘With so 
fragmentary a record as this to study, I do not think 
it too much to say that no conclusions can fairly be 
based upon it, merely from the absence of testimony. 
If we speak of it as a history of life upon the planet, 
we must allow, on the one hand, that it is a history 
which merits the name of ‘a chapter of accidents’; and, 

100 


PALEONTOLOGY 
eee 


on'the other hand, that during the whole course of its 
compilation pages were being destroyed as fast as 
others were being formed, while even of those that re- 
main it is only a word, a line, or, at most, a short 
paragraph here and there, that we are permitted to 
see.’’ It is certain that the geological record is the one 
and only book that contains a history of creation. 
Romanes says, however, that it is so fragmentary that 
it must be looked upon as ‘‘a chapter of accidents.’’ 
He assumes that the immense majority of fossils, com- 
posed of the most durable materials—namely, carbon- 
ate and phosphate of calcium, the carbonate shells and 
corals composing a large part of the limestone in ex- 
istence—have been lost. An incredible number of shells 
and corals, sometimes silicified, have been preserved in 
perfect condition in the limestones, but the connecting 
forms, which, if they existed, vastly outnumbered the 
known forms and were of similar materials, are not 
found. It is evident that the conditions for preserving 
connecting forms were as favorable as for preserving 
known forms. The only conclusion that we draw from 
this is that the so-called ‘‘missing links’’ never existed. 

Le Conte, in speaking of this condition, says: ‘‘We 
think the fragmentariness of the geological record has 
been overstated. While it is true that there are many 
and wide gaps in the record; while it is true, also, that 
even where the record is continuous, many forms may 
not have been preserved, yet there are some cases, espe- 
cially in the Tertiary fresh-water deposits, where the 
record is not only continuous for hundreds of feet in 
thickness, but the abundance of life was very great, 
and the conditions necessary for preservation exception- 
ally good. In such cases the number of fossil species 

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THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


rr ——— 


found in each horizon seems to be as great as in exist- 
ing faunas over equal space. The record in these cases 
seems to be continuous and without break, and crowded 
with fossil forms; and yet, although the species change 
greatly, and perhaps many times, in passing from the 
lowest to the highest strata, we do not usually, it must 
be acknowledged, find the gradual transitions we would 
naturally expect, if the change were effected by gradual 
transitions. The incompleteness of the record, there- 
fore, although a true and important cause, is not the 
whole cause.’’ He also says that the absence of con- 
necting forms is ‘‘the greatest of all objections’’ to the 
theory of evolution. He says also: ‘‘As in the case of 
continuous geographical faunas, the change is appar- 
ently by substitution of one species for another, and 
not by transmutation of one species into another. So 
also in successive geological faunas the change seems 
rather by substitution than by transformation.”’ 
Darwin says that ‘‘the number both of specimens 
and of species, preserved in our museums, is absolutely 
as nothing compared with the number of generations 
which must have passed away even during a single 
formation.’’ This might be true with animals that 
were deficient in hard parts that could be fossilized, 
but not true of mollusks having shells of the usual 
kind. But the latter are remarkably deficient, and 
Darwin expresses himself as follows with regard to the 
absence of transitional forms: ‘‘But I do not pretend 
that I should ever have suspected how poor was the 
record in the best preserved geological sections, had 
not the absence of innumerable transitional links be- 
tween the species which lived at the commencement and 
close of each formation pressed so hardly on my theory.’’ 
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PALEONTOLOGY 


And yet Mr. Darwin assumes that most organic forms 
left no fossil remains, and that the great number absent 
would be in favor of his theory if they were found. 
There is no reason why intermediate forms of fossil 
shells and corals would not have been preserved. 

He and Romanes, and others who hold with them, 
are obliged to blot out nearly all of the second half of 
the tree of life as being unknown. With the first half 
of this tree entirely unknown, and nearly all of the 
second half gone, we are left with isolated spots that in 
no way remind one of a tree. This harmonizes well 
with the following statement by Dr. Ethridge, of the 
British Museum: ‘‘In all this great museum there is 
not a particle of evidence of transmutation of species. 
Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer non- 
sense, not founded on observation and wholly unsup- 
ported by fact. This museum is full of proof of the 
utter falsity of their views.’’ 

Another method by which the evolutionary process 
has been widely represented, especially so far as the 
production of man is concerned, is by means of a line 
sloping up from a cell at the lower end and man as the 
outcome of the process at the other. According to 
Osborn’s idea, the line would begin with a bacterium, 
which is lower in the scale of life than the cell, and 
end in man at the other end. The unbroken line join- 
ing the two represents the unbroken physical continuity 
that must have existed. 

I will next consider the imaginary line by which it 
- is claimed man has been evolved from bacterium to 
man. The evolutionist asks only one speck of living 
protoplasm, one bacterium, in order that he may show 
by scientific process how man has been evolved. In the 

103 ; 


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first place, he is obliged to admit that he can not ex- 
plain by science this living speck. But, starting with 
it, the next step would be to convert it into a plant of 
one cell, a protophyte, and this into a protozoon, an 
animal of one cell. This, of course, he has not been 
able to do. 

All animals of one cell are Protozoa, and those of 
more than one cell are Metazoa. The Protozoa are gen- 
erally microscopic in size. <A cell has an outer cover- 
ing, a cell-wall, which is filled with protoplasm in 
which is a nucleus. Reproduction takes place by the 
division of the nucleus into two parts, and by the con- 
striction of the cell-wall so as to form two cells, each 
with a nucleus. Reproduction is never sexual. Metazoa 
‘all propagate themselves by means of sexual con- 
gress,’’ and this method must at times take place, al- 
though some of the lowest forms may, at times, to a 
limited extent, propagate in other ways. Sexual repro- 
duction is brought about by the fusion of a male and 
female cell. The cell of the female, the ovun, is fertil- 
ized by the spermatozoon of the male, which is many 
times smaller than the ovum. Fertilization is ‘‘effected 
by the fusion of the male and female pronuclei into 
a single (or new) nucleus; this latter body proceeds to 
exhibit the complicated process of karyokinesis, which, 
as before shown, are preliminary to nuclear division in 
the case of egg-cells. The processes going on within 
the nucleus are so enormously complex and, withal, so 
beautifully ordered, that, to my mind, they constitute 
the most wonderful—if not also the most suggestive— 
which have ever been revealed by microscopical re- 
search. It is needless to say that I refer to the phe- 
nomena of karyokinesis.’’ 

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From what I have written, it is evident that there 
is a great gap between the Protozoa, all of which are 
one-celled animals, and the Metazoa, which are com- 
posed of many cells. All the higher types of the 
Metazoa are composed of many kinds of cells, which 
make up the various kinds of organs and enable them 
to perform their various complicated functions. It was 
necessary that the first Metazoon be evolved from a 
Protozoon—that an animal without sex should be con- 
verted into one or more animals with sex. In doing 
this, we are obliged to jump from the simple method of 
reproduction by division to one of the most complicated 
processes in nature—sexual reproduction. This diffi- 
culty has not been bridged, nor do I think it can be. 
Of course, it can easily be bridged in the usual way, by 
an assumption. 

It is commonly assumed that the immediate ancestor 
of the vertebrate was a worm, of which balanoglossus 
is an example. The road of evolution of this worm is 
entirely unknown, but evolutionists are certain that it 
persisted in its upward course till it became an amphi- 
oxus-like vertebrate with a notochord which represents 
a backbone. Amphioxus, by further evolution, became 
a fish, with all the organs that fishes now have. It is 
evident that if the ancestors of balanoglossus were 
evolved and the latter became amphioxus, and both 
forms have existed until now, that their lack of capac- 
ity for progress shows that they were poorly prepared 
to become the ancestors of man. 

Fishes——Perfect fishes of various kinds were found 
throughout the Silurian, and they abounded in the 
Devonian, which has been called the age of fishes. The 
rocks are blank as to their origin. It is easy to assume 

105 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





that they were evolved, and this is done in the name of 
science. The imagination alone can account for the 
origin and preservation of fins through their long-use- 
less stages. But the science (?) of the evolutionist says 
that they were evolved. 

Amphibians and Reptiles——We pass upward to the 
amphibian and the reptile, which had legs and toes 
which must have been evolved from fins, and so we 
must accept this evolution as ‘‘established’’ science (?). 

Birds.—The next step upward is, along one branch, 
to birds, which it is claimed were evolved from reptiles. 
The oldest known bird is the Archeopteryx of the 
Solenhofen limestone. This warm-blooded bird was 
evolved from a cold-blooded reptile, and the scales of 
the reptile were converted into the feathers of the bird. 
As to how this happened we are left to imagine. It is 
evident, however, that, if the Archeopteryx was 
evolved, then, prior to the known fossil specimen of the 
Jurassic, it must have had a long line of ancestors, ex- 
tending far back into the Paleozoic age; none of which 
ancestors have been found. 

_  Mammals—From another line of reptiles it is 
claimed that the mammals were evolved. They are 
warm-blooded, and have non-nucleated red blood cor- 
puscles, while the reptile is cold-blooded, and has nucle- 
ated red corpuscles. Mammals are generally covered 
with hair, and all mammals have some hair on their 
bodies. As to how the necessary changes could have 
taken place in evolving mammal from reptile, from 
~ eold to warm blood, from nucleated to non-nucleated 
red corpuscles, and from scales to hairs, we are again 
left to imagine. This evolution also demands the evolu- 
tion of milk glands, and the instincts in both. the parent 
106 


PALEONTOLOGY 





and offspring to use these glands for the nourishment 
of the young, from a reptile that had no glands of this 
kind. It would be necessary that this great change be 
made in a single generation, so that it would be useful 
to the new species; otherwise, it would perish. The 
remains of the oldest mammals known have been found 
in the Triassic and were probably insectivorous in their 
habits. These mammals were of the size of mice and 
rats. We are totally at a loss to imagine how one of 
these small marsupials, covered with hair and nourish- 
ing its young with milk, could have been suddenly 
evolved from a reptile. Besides, if these mammals of 
the Triassic were evolved, they must have appeared as 
intermediate forms far back in the Paleozoic, where 
none of their remains have been found. The Triassic, 
Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks, which constitute the 
Mesozoic, were, in the aggregate, probably from fifty to 
sixty thousand feet in thickness, bearing abundant fos- 
sils, and requiring millions of years for their deposit. 
During all of this time, down to the close of the Cre- 
taceous, the remains of a few marsupials only have 
been found; true placental mammals not having yet 
appeared. Chamberlin and Salisbury remark: ‘‘The 
mammals thus far recovered from the Cretaceous indi- 
cate little advance upon those of the Jurassic. Mam- 
mals appear to have played a very inconspicuous part 
in the fauna of the period.’? The scarcity and small- 
ness of the animals, and their total lack of progress 
during the millions of years, furnish the poorest imag- 
inable beginning for the evolution of the great and 
numerous placental mammals of the next age. 
107 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


ee 
THE TERTIARY, OR THE AGE OF MAMMALS. 


Following the Cretaceous is the Tertiary, or the age 
of mammals. This is commonly divided into three 
periods—the Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene, in their 
order of succession. 

Chamberlin and Salisbury say of the Eocene mam- 
mals: ‘‘The evolution of mammals was so rapid that 
before the close of the Eocene the Herbivora (Ungu- 
lata), Carnivora, Edentata, Insectivora, Rodentia, Quad- 
rumina, Cetacea, Sirenia, and probably the Cheirop- 
tera, were distinctly defined.’’ Among the mammals 
were many of large size, such as the Titanotherium, 
Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, Deinoceros, Tinoceras, 
Coryphodon, Tillotherium, Palaeosyops, Brontops, Giant 
Pigs, a Zeuglodon whale seventy feet long which 
abounded in the Gulf of Mexico and has left numerous 
remains on the Gulf coast, and many other kinds on 
the land and in the sea. The development of the great 
number of mammals during the Eocene is one of the 
most remarkable things in all geological history. Their 
origin has not, and can not, I believe, be explained by 
the theory of evolution. That their ancestors were the 
small marsupials of the Cretaceous, which had, up to 
the close of that period, made no progress in structure 
during millions of years that marsupials had existed, 
seems wholly impossible; and yet this must be assumed 
to have taken place unless we seek a different origin 
for the Eocene mammals. The only other origin that 
eould be sought would be reptiles of an unknown kind. 

The evolutionist is obliged to claim that the Eocene 
mammals were evolved from animals that existed in the 
Cretaceous, and here he cuts the usual Gordian knot 

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PALEONTOLOGY 





with his assumption, in the name of science. In the 
Miocene and Pliocene periods many additional mam- 
mals were introduced, and so on in the Quaternary, 
forms now extinct were present, as well as our modern 
species, and their remains are found mingled with those 
of early man. 

Representatives of the lower primates, the lemu- 
roids, from which apes are supposed to have de- 
scended, have been found in the Eocene. In the 
Miocene period true apes appeared in the Old World. 
‘‘No remains of lemuroids or their descendants have 
been found in the Pliocene of North America.’’ It is 
evident from this that man has not, if anywhere, been 
evolved on this continent. Remains of man more 
ancient than those of Indians have not been found 
here, nor is there any evidence that he. had his origin 
from some lower animal in Europe. 

Osborn speaks about ‘‘seven or eight’’ races having 
migrated into Europe, ‘‘chiefly from the great Eura- 
siatic continent of the East,’’ during the glacial periods, 
of which he claims that there were four. The inhabit- 
ants of Europe arrived in Europe as men. A few 
remains of man that are quite ancient have been found 
in Europe. No one can, with any degree of accuracy, 
estimate their age in years. Yet there are anthropolo- 
gists who do not hesitate to push man back into the ice 
age, and claim that he has been in Europe many thou- 
sands of years. 

Osborn’s recent book, ‘‘The Old Stone Age,’’ takes 
for granted, of course, that evolution is true. To read 
the book one would suppose that little, if any, opposi- 
tion has been offered to the extreme positions that have 
been assumed. As usual, the artist has been called in 

109 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION | 


to reconstruct from a single jaw-bone in one case the 
complete bust of the former owner of the lower jaw- 
bone, with a hog swung gracefully across his shoulders. 
I do not see why the same artist might not from this 
same jaw have greatly enlarged his work and con- 
‘structed this man’s wife and children, a few wolf-like 
dogs, a dead cave-bear lying in front of the cave, and 
many other surroundings, all of which would probably 
be as credible as the work he has done. This bust and 
hog beautifully wrought by the artist, Professor Rutot, 
of Berlin, from that jaw-bone is all that is necessary to 
convince the average reader that it represents what 
once existed as a fact. The imagination of the artist 
supplies the facts of science (?). 

The ‘‘Piltdown man of Sussex, England,’’ has been 
fortunate to have so good an artist as J. H. McGregor 
prepare in plaster his head and neck, of which three 
views are given in the book. The view of the bones 
does not seem to sustain the work of the artist. A 
different artist would, doubtless, construct a bust that 
did not closely resemble that by McGregor, especially if 
his ideas of early humanity were not so degraded as 
those that some anthropologists possess. 

The geological record does not show that man was 
derived from an ape-like ancestor anywhere. The most 
ancient skulls of Europe described in Osborn’s book 
are acknowledged to be human. The discovery of Pith- 
ecanthropus erectus by Dr. Dubois, in Java, in 1891, is 
the most important that anthropologists have yet made. 
I have spoken of this sufficiently in the chapter on 
‘‘Byolution and the Public Schools.’’ I will remark, 
however, that the profile views of Pithecanthropus and 
of spy I. are practically the same size in their outlines. 

110 


PALEONTOLOGY 





It is known that the latter is human, and the former, 
so far as the size of the brain is concerned, may also 
be human. The brain of Pithecanthropus is from 855 
to 900 cubic centimeters, while that of the smallest 
human brain recorded in lower members of the human 
race is 930 cubic centimeters. It was noted at the time 
of the death of Gambetta, who was the political leader 
in the Republic of France, that his brain was unusually 
small. The unknown factor ‘‘quality’’ counts much in 
intelligence. 

Again I say, let the leading anthropologists, and 
others who are specially skilled in that line, agree as to 
the standing of Pithecanthropus before individual in- 
vestigators who are specially wedded to the theory of 
evolution triumphantly proclaim that it was the ‘‘miss- 
ing link.’”’ Osborn himself seems to be in doubt as to 
the true position of these bones when he says: ‘‘There 
are, however, reasons for excluding Pithecanthropus 
from the direct ancestral line of the higher races of 
men.’’ This statement blots out Pithecanthropus as a 
remote ancestor of the Caucasian race. This destroys 
the foundation of the hopes of the anthropologists. 
They must still go in search of the ‘‘missing link.’’ 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





Vil 
LAW 


AM satisfied that the chief stronghold of evolution, 

in the opinion of many, is the idea of the universal 
reign of law. Law prevails everywhere, among all 
material things, and among the forces of nature, and 
in the realm of mind. All events are determined by 
fixed laws. Man has no power to change the laws of 
nature; they are founded in the nature of things. The 
universe is a mechanism—the world is a machine. Man 
is wholly in the grasp of laws from which he can not 
escape. Man is a machine with no free will. The law 
of cause and effect extends through all nature. Cause 
and effect constitute an endless chain, through all the 
ages. The objector says that determinism, fatalism, is 
the inevitable result. Law eliminates miracles and 
revelations, and evolution, of necessity, follows. It is 
the scientific method that follows the law of cause and 
effect. 

The above illustrates the loose way in which people 
think and talk. It is a sample of mental incoherence. 

Let us consider some of the things that are within 
our reach with the idea of law. They are; First, the 
different kinds of matter; second, the forces of nature; 
third, plant life; fourth, animal life; fifth, all psycho- 
logical powers of all animals, from the general sensa- 
tion alone which all animals have, up through the 

112 


LAW 





special senses, through the many instincts, to the mind 
of man with its wonderful powers. 

Before life appeared on the earth, the inorganic 
world alone existed. This dead world, so far as science 
can view it, was made up of the various kinds of matter 
and the forces of nature. I have called attention to 
these briefly in another chapter. The great science of 
chemistry, the most important of all the Sciences, is 
founded upon the fact that laws of various kinds exist 
among the substances that compose the earth. The law 
of definite proportions in chemistry is a statement of 
the fact that when two or more elements unite to form 
a compound, the ratios between the weights of the ele- 
ments that combine are always the same. For example, 
the relative weights of hydrogen and oxygen, that com- 
bine to form water, are invariable. That is, water has 
a. definite, invariable composition. One correct analysis 
of pure water shows the composition of all water. The 
same law holds good with the hundreds of thousands 
of compounds that are formed from the elements. Car- 
bon alone is known to enter into more than a hundred 
thousand compounds. This shows the immense power 
of carbon to combine in different proportions with other 
elements. Nearly all of the simple substances combine 
with others to form compounds, and some of them com- 
bine with most of the elements to form compounds. 
Fewer than one hundred elements are known, but their 
affinities cause them to unite in endless ways to form 
the immense number of substances that are found in 
the earth. Fewer than one hundred elements are 
known, and most of them exist in nature only in 
combination, .so that most things that we see are 
compounds. 

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THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


er Le 


The fact that law reigns among the atoms of matter 
furnishes the basis of chemistry. This fact is of the 
utmost importance to man. A knowledge of these laws 
enables him to prepare a multitude of chemicals that 
are of the utmost importance in the various walks of 
life. Without the existence of these laws and without 
man’s knowledge of them he would be helpless in the 
presence of the riches by which he is surrounded. As 
to why elements unite to form compounds we are igno- 
rant. When a lighted taper is stuck to a mixture of two 
volumes of hydrogen and one of oxygen, the gases unite 
with an explosion, and water is the product of the 
union. We eall the force that causes them to unite 
chemism, or chemical affinity ; but this name, while con- 
venient, only expresses our ignorance. The chemist 
rightly assumes that under like conditions he will 
obtain like results. This is only another way of saying 
that law prevails in the chemical world. He also 
knows that he must: conform to the law to obtain the 
result. His knowledge of the law gives him a definite 
grasp of things, so that he can proceed with intelligent 
foresight to obtain desired results. Without a knowl- 
edge of the laws of chemistry man could have made but 
little progress in the world. These laws are beneficent. 
Man is not in their grasp; but they are under his 
guidance, and thus serve his purpose. The chemical 
force acts at insensible distances only. 

The motions of the planets around the sun in defi- 
nite orbits and at certain rates, and the motions of the 
satellites of the planets, furnish the foundation for 
astronomy. We say that these bodies move accord- 
ing to fixed laws. Gravitation, which-acts at all 
distances, determines their motions. Their laws are 

114 


LAW 





only their regular motions that are determined by 
gravitation. 

Light, heat and electricity—each has its definite 
methods of action, some of which we have learned; and 
we speak of the laws of these forces. A knowledge of 
the many ways in which these forees act constitutes 
great branches of modern science. It is certain that 
they act according to definite methods, and it is this 
fact that enables man to use them with success. We are 
accustomed to say that these forces act according to law; 
which, as in other cases, means only that they act in 
certain definite ways. There is no terror to be assigned 
to the fact that the methods of their action are uniform. 

Chemistry, physics and astronomy are all based on 
the fact that the forces involved all act in definite ways, 
or according to laws. These forces are so related to each 
other that each of them can be converted into all the 
others, which is a fact of the highest importance in the 
commercial world. They belong primarily to the inor- 
ganic world. They were here ages before life appeared. 

We next consider the lowest part of the living 
world, the existence of which the dead world can not 
account for. Passing over bacteria, the lowest of living 
organisms, and over the one-celled plants, and up to 
the higher land-plants with which we are more familiar, 
we learn that certain kinds of food are necessary, and 
that the food is appropriated in certain definite ways. 
We know, also, that ight and heat are necessary that 
the plant may do its work. We learn that plants manu- 
facture a great number of compounds that do not exist 
in the dead world. Woody fiber, starch, sugar, oils and 
protoplasm are among the most important compounds 
that they manufacture; but there is also a vast number 

115 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





(and many of them very complex) of compounds that 
are produced by plants. The chemist can not follow 
the methods that are used by the plants. Plants have 
a corner on methods that can not be infringed on. Even 
when man has made in the laboratory a few compounds 
of carbon which the living world produces, he has used 
methods entirely different from those of the organic 
world. Urea, a waste animal product, was the first 
that was produced artificially in the laboratory. The 
chemist has no hope of being able to produce living 
protoplasm, which has been spoken of as ‘‘the basis of 
life,’’ and is the most important substance in plants 
and animals. 

We can readily believe that the plant performs all 
of its functions according to laws; but they are not the 
laws of the inorganic world. While the forces that 
prevail in the inorganic world aid the plant in doing 
its work, they alone are not sufficient to do the whole 
work of the plant. The laws of plant growth have not 
been produced by the laws of the dead world _ below. 
When we think of the functions of the plant, we are 
obliged to think of more than dead matter and the inor- 
ganic forces of nature. It is evident that the word 
“‘law’’ has a different meaning here from what it has 
when referring to the inorganic world. 

Looking at the animal kingdom, we learn that 
animals can not live on the inorganic world alone; they 
must have organic food, either from plants or from 
other animals, in order to grow and do their work. 
They can convert organic tissues, such as lean meat, 
starch, sugar and fats, into the tissues of their own 
bodies. The living body of the animal is more than the 
tissues which the plant furnishes as food, plus the inor- 

116 


LAW 
Fa ese eee 
ganic foods and forces of the dead world. The living 
animal forces reign supreme in the animal, and enable 
it to perform its functions. It organizes a large num- 
ber of tissues and substances which form its body and 
enable it to perform its complex functions. 

The laws of the animal are more than those of the 
dead world and of the plant. The word ‘‘law’’ here 
has a meaning that it has not had before. 

When we consider the psychology of animals, we 
are in a region that demands new laws continually as 
we ascend the scale. At the bottom, and universal in 
the animal kingdom, is the general sense of feeling. 
Spencer wrote: ‘‘That a unit of feeling has nothing in 
common with a unit of motion becomes more and more 
manifest when we bring the two into juxtaposition.’’ 
Matter, motion and force were Mr. Spencer’s only data 
for universal evolution, and they utterly fail to account 
for even the most elementary feelings. Of course, their 
failure only manifests itself more completely in the 
highest psychological regions. Besides general feeling, 
there are the sensations of hunger, thirst, warmth, 
weariness, pressure, pain, and many others that indi- 
eate conditions of the body. The laws that determine 
these are not those of dead matter and of the vegetable 
world, but something additional enters into these gen- 
eral sensations. And then there are the special senses 
—sight, hearing, taste and smell—that act in certain 
ways that we call laws; but they are different from 
anything else. 

The endless number of instincts in the animal king- 
dom, which contribute to the welfare of each species, 
call in vain for some adequate explanation of their 
existence. In ‘‘Organic Evolution Considered’’ I have 

117 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


ce 


called attention to a few of these instincts, and espe- 
cially to those of the honey-bee, and, as I believe, have 
shown that they could not have been produced by the 
process of evolution. Instincts are the untaught and 
unimprovable psychological powers which animals pos- 
sess by inheritance. We can imagine that, in some 
sense, instincts are subject to laws; but they are differ- 
ent from all that precedes. Something, we know not 
what, has been added to produce them. 

Leaving these things, we consider briefly the mind 
of man. with regard to law. I am not proposing to con- 
sider here the question of the evolution of the human 
mind from that of the lower animals. The gulf be- 
tween the mind of man and that of the lower animals 
is practically infinite. Mr. Darwin and others have 
tried in vain to bridge the chasm by evolution. They 
have assumed that the difference between the mind of 
man and that of the lower animals is that of degree 
and not: of kind. And yet Mr. Darwin’s admissions 
show clearly, I think, that the gap can not be closed. 
He says: ‘‘There can be no doubt that the difference 
between the mind of the lowest man and that of the 
highest animal is immense.’’ The following is a sum- 
mary of his admissions. The ‘‘anthropomorphous ape,’’ 
‘‘taking a dispassionate view of himself,’’ admits ‘‘that 
he has never thought of fashioning even the simplest 
tool; that he can not follow out a train of metaphysical 
reasoning, or solve a mathematical problem, or reflect 
on God, or admire a grand natural scene;’’ that “‘the 
notion of expressing definite ideas by definite sounds 
had never crossed their minds;’’ that ‘‘disinterested 
love for all things, the most noble attribute of man, was 
quite beyond their comprehension;’’ that he had no 

118 


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knowledge of right or wrong; that he was totally igno- 
rant of the meaning of that ‘‘imperious word ‘ought’ ;’’ 
that he had no ‘‘self-consciousness, nor idea of indi- 
viduality, nor general ideas,’’ ete., for these latter 
faculties imply mental powers ‘‘advanced to a high 
standard’’ and ‘‘the use of a perfect language.’’ This 
formidable list might be extended so as to include, if 
it does not already, the whole history of man; all arts 
and sciences and education and religion—everything 
that man thinks, feels and does, and which no animal 
can in any way perform. 

Man is the only being who can consciously live in 
the present, past and future. He alone is self-conscious 
—conscious of his own existence; he alone has an idea 
of right and wrong, can form abstract ideas, can enter 
into a chain of reasoning, recognize the past and con- 
sciously appropriate its lessons for the present and the 
future, lay hold on the future by faith and hope; he 
alone is capable of disinterested world-wide love, that 
love which is godlike. Man alone can recognize God 
and render him worship. He possesses many psycholog- 
ical powers that we need not try to enumerate. Shake- 
speare speaks of man as follows: ‘‘What a piece of 
work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in 
faculties! In form and moving, how express and ad- 
mirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehen- 
sion, how like a god!’’ 

Man, with all his other powers, without a will would 
be helpless. The will is as the mainspring to the watch, 
as the drive-wheel to the engine, as the steam to the 
Iccomotive. It drives the human engine to carry into 
effect its conscious purposes. The will is free. This 
freedom is the fact that we are free to choose between 

119 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


NN  —————————— 


motives. We are thoroughly conscious of this fact in 
our own lives. This consciousness is fundamental, and 
‘we are no more called upon to prove its existence than 
we are to prove that we see or think. Our idea of right 
is based on the freedom of the human will, for without 
such freedom no act has moral quality. Conscience 
exists because we recognize that we are free to choose 
between motives. ee 

I suppose that in some sense the faculties of the 
human mind act according to laws; but the laws are 
entirely different from those in the animal, plant and 
inorganic realms. The powers of the mind have not 
been derived from anything below them. Mind is the 
dominating factor in the world. It organizes, disor- 
ganizes, constructs, destroys, invents, utilizes, and does 
a million things that nothing else can do. Without the 
wind of man, the materials and forces of nature would 
be but waste. Without the dominating mind of man, 
there would be no worthy end of earthly things. His 
dominion extends to all kinds of matter and forces of 
nature, and over the plants and animals that exist in 
the world. He has modified and utilized for infinite 
-purposes, by the exercise of his mind, the whole world. 
Man is not a lawless being. At every step he has 
obeyed the laws of the things with which he has dealt. 
In chemistry he has succeeded because he has obeyed 
the laws of chemistry. In physics he has taken advan- 
-tage of mechanical laws and of the laws of the forces 
-with which he has dealt. In dealing with plants he has 
-recognized the laws of plant life; and with animals he 
chas observed the laws of animal life. The farmer is 
just beginning to realize that plants are related in defi- 
nite ways to soils, food supply, moisture and sunshine, 

. 120 


LAW 


EE SE A TS 


and that he must recognize the laws of plant growth if 
he would be successful in farming. 

Here the mechanist comes in and says: ‘‘I told you 
so.’’ ‘‘All things are in the grasp of law, and we can’t 
escape it. Man’s life is determined by laws that he 
ean’t evade. He is not responsible for his acts,’’ and 
so this objector lands in determinism. He forgets that 
he has used the word ‘‘law’’ in a number of different 
senses; that the laws in the lower realms do not deter- 
mine those in the higher; and, especially, that the 
human mind is free, and takes advantage of all laws in 
all realms to accomplish man’s purposes. It is this 
fact especially that gives us the assurance that the 
world is not a mechanism run on mechanical principles 
alone. 

Here is a large quantity of heat, which, if left alone, 
would be radiated into space according to the laws of 
radiation. The inorganic world alone can not utilize 
this heat, and so it is radiated into space without doing 
any work. But here is a man, with his dominant mind, 
who will utilize it for practical purposes. He may cook 
his food with it, warm his body, distribute to his neigh- 
bors for household purposes, reduce many metals from 
their ores, or set the world on fire with it, if he chooses 
to do so. Or he may use this heat in a steam-engine 
and compel it to grind grain, saw wood, crush rock, 
hoist loads, run trains, fly air-planes and drive ocean 
steamers. Or, again, he may run a steam-engine which 
drives a dynamo, thus producing electricity, which runs 
street-cars, produces incandescent and are lights, while 
some of it may be converted into heat again, with which 
to cook food and warm apartments. This same elec- 
tricity might be made to do the work of an electric 

121 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





furnace, and thus manufacture most valuable commer- 
cial compounds. Or it might be used to reduce various 
metals from their compounds, and deposit others, as is 
done on a large scale in the mining industries. Or, 
again, the electricity might be used to charge magnets, 
which serve many purposes. 

In the inanimate world it was heat going to waste. 
Under the control and by the inventions of man, the 
same heat is made to serve a large number of useful 
purposes. In both cases it was acting according to the 
laws of heat. It is evident that without the controlling 
influence of mind none of these things could have been 
accomplished. Mind brings to pass an endless number 
of things that could never occur without its controlling 
power. It has turned the world upside down and modi- 
fied it in millions of ways. Mind is not ruled by the 
forces of nature; but, on the other hand, it guides all 
forces and compels them to serve beneficent ends. It 
has acquired dominion, and has subdued nearly all 
within its reach. It has searched the depths of the 
oceans in quest of treasures; it has brought forth the 
jewels and precious metals from their secret places, and 
the more abundant> metals and coals from the hills and 
mountains. From down deep in the earth it has brought 
up mineral waters, illuminating gas and oils that have 
been lying in wait for ages. It has sent forth its mag- 
nificent ships freighted with the commerce of civiliza- 
tion, and they have returned bearing the products of 
other lands. It has netted the land with innumerable’ 
wires over which messages fly on the wings of the light- 
ning. It has planted its cables in the depths of the 
oceans, thus binding the continents together, thus antici- 
pating the brotherhood of nations. It flashes its wire- 

122 


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less messages through thousands of miles, and the un- 
seen pulsations are caught, to the salvation of multi- 
tudes who would otherwise perish. By means of the 
ever-present telephone it has helped to revolutionize 
commerce, and has made neighbors of the inhabitants 
of neighborhoods and of great regions. It invents 
mighty printing-presses, which turn out in an hour 
millions of newspapers, which are distributed speedily 
throughout the land. Time would fail were I to try to 
cnumerate the achievements of the human mind along 
the lines of art, science, commerce, education and re- 
ligion in their details. The earth is the storehouse of 
the fruits of the achievements of mind. 

But we are considering the question of universal 
law. Mind has made the world all over new. Elimi- 
nating man from the world, the laws of nature would 
make this world a wilderness. It is evident that the 
laws of nature below man have not created him. Let 
us consider the word ‘‘law’’ more carefully. 

The inorganic world, as far as we can see, is made 
up of matter and force. Force is that which moves 
matter; and, without force, matter would have no 
motion. All mechanical changes consist in force mov- 
ing matter. All the work that man can do is done by 
the application of force of some kind to the moving and 
shaping of matter. Each force acts in definite ways, 
and these definite methods of action we call laws. This 
is the sum of laws in the inorganic world. Man simply 
directs the forces of nature into various channels, and 
they do their work by certain methods. Man is not sub- 
ject to the forces that he uses as tools, but he directs 
them. In doing things with these forces as tools, he 

123 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





recognizes that a hand-saw is not a smoothing-plane and 
that an augur is not a file. 

There is no room, so far as man is concerned, for 
the words ‘‘determinism’’ or ‘‘fatalism’’; for his free 
will dominates all. He is not the slave, but the master, 
of the forces that he guides. He is not in the grip of 
the lower world, but is its supreme master. Man, in 
using the heat to which I have referred in bringing 
about the great number of results named, has done a 
work of great complexity in converting this heat into 
various forms of energy by the use of special machin- 
ery; but in doing these things he has simply taken 
advantage of the so-called laws or methods according 
to which these forces act. He has directed them to the 
accomplishment of intelligent purpose; he has exercised 
supreme lordship over matter and force. 

We pass from the inorganic world up to plants, 
which obtain their food exclusively from the inorganic 
world. In plants a new force arrived that could modify 
the whole surface of the earth and clothe it with living 
vegetation. The plant organism as a whole is antag- 
onistic to the mineral world. Its body is composed 
mostly of complex compounds that do not exist in the 
inorganic world. The plant has the power to decom- 
pose a variety of minerals and thus obtain food with 
which it builds up its own complex living tissues. When 
the plant dies it returns to the inorganic world, and 
may serve as plant food anew. The same materials 
may serve repeatedly as food for plants. The plant, in 
doing its wonderful work of converting dead materials 
into living tissues, is not dominated by the forces of 
the mineral world. It overcomes the chemical forces 
of the minerals from which it obtains its food, and 

124 : 


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builds up the materials into a great number of com- 
plex compounds, many of which serve as food for 
animals. I have no doubt that the plant does its work 
according to certain methods which we call laws. 
Passing upward to the animal world, we find organ- 
isms that must have as food the complex substances 
which plants have prepared from the inorganic world. 
Animals are further away from the mineral world than 
are vegetables. The life forces that they possess organ- 
ize into tissues a great number of compounds that the 
vegetable world can not prepare. We presume that the 
animal functions are performed in definite ways that 
we call laws. But in the animal world we meet with 
certain phenomena that do not manifest themselves in 
the vegetable kingdom. Among these are sensations of 
many kinds, special senses, instincts throughout the 
animal kingdom, and, finally, mind, with its multitude 
of powers which enable it to dominate the world. We 
presume that definite methods prevail throughout the 
psychic world, and these methods we call laws. The 
actions of the lower animals are brought about by vari- 
ous powers, and to these powers we give special names. 
It is evident that these various psychic powers, in as- 
eending scale, could not have been derived one from 
another, and that their laws are independent of each 
other. For example, the separate instincts of the honey- 
bee could not have been derived from each other. One 
special sense could not have been derived from another. 
Laws are simply the methods according to which 
events occur in nature. Laws are due to the action of 
forees—dead forces in the mineral world, living forces 
in all living things, psychic forces in all animals, and the 
highest psychic forces, the faculties of the human mind, 
125 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


a 


in man. Without the methods by which the various 
forces work, and his ability to grasp these methods to a 
certain extent, man would perish. All of his foresight 
and progress is built upon his knowledge of methods, or 
laws, as we are accustomed to call them. The human 
mind is the legal tribunal for the methods of things. 

Men have sometimes used the word ‘‘law’’ as if it 
were a fearful implement. Some have spoken of it as 
if it were God. The expression, ‘‘The Reign of Law,’’ 
has cast a shadow over many a human soul, bringing 
fear and trembling. God is a God of law, a God of 
method; and this is necessary for man’s very existence. 
Again, I say, man is not in chains, is not in slavery, 
but is supreme over the laws of earth. The powers of 
his mind enable him to dominate all the powers below 
him. No living thing could live in a world of anarchy. 
A lawless universe would be a godless universe. 

The things that happen are the resultant of all the 
forces that aré acting at the time of an event, and that 
may have been acting in the past toward the event. 
The law of resultants is well known in physics in the 
motion of masses. Few, if any, motions are brought 
about by the action of a single force. As a rule, some 
one force so predominates that the work done is attrib- 
uted to that force alone. 

When the human mind is at work, it determines 
resultants by selecting, combining and directing forces 
in all conceivable ways. The mind has the power to 
convert the potential energies of the human body into 
kinetic muscular energy, and through this to direct the 
various forces by which all work is done. Mind multi- 
plies resultants at pleasure and without limit. It 
rejoices in its godlike superiority of dominion. 

126 


GOD IN THE WORLD 


EL — ——————————— 


VII 
GOD IN THE WORLD 


IME and space are infinite. We can not conceive 
the beginning nor end of time, nor a region beyond 
which there is no space. They are self-existent. 
Within this infinite space the great telescopes reveal 
many thousands of suns that we call stars, all of which 
are at immense distances. Most of them are so far 
away that we have no means of estimating, even approx- 
imately, their distance from the earth. Some of them 
are known to be much larger than our sun, which is 
more than one hundred thousand miles in diameter. 
Many of them are so distant that it would require thou- 
sands of years for their light, traveling at the rate of 
186,000 miles a second, to reach the earth. We see a 
star, not as it actually is at present, but as it was many, 
perhaps thousands, of years ago, when the light that 
we receive started from it. The stars have various 
degrees of temperature: from those that have ceased 
to be luminous, up through various degrees of red, to 
stars that are heated most intensely white. The stars 
are suns, and, judging from our own solar system, they 
doubtless have innumerable planets revolving around 
- them, many of which may be peopled with living beings. 
The physical universe is to us practically infinite. 
The earth is but a grain of sand compared to the infi- 
nite mass of matter that is known to exist. 
9 127 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





The spectroscope reveals the fact that the sun is 
made up of materials like those found in the earth. It 
is known that stars which have been examined contain 
hydrogen and other materials that exist here. It seems 
evident that the universe is composed of a few elements 
that constitute the mass of the earth. Less than a hun- 
dred simple substances are known to exist here, and 
only a few of these are found in abundance. 

The sun and the stars are daily radiating into infi- 
nite space immense quantities of heat and light. Most 
of the heat and light that the sun radiates is lost to the 
solar system, and, unless there are enough stars and 
other material bodies to intercept it all, it must travel 
on forever through infinite space. And so of the radi- 
ant energy of the stars. The sun and stars could not 
have existed through an infinite past in their intensely 
heated condition, because no finite body can radiate an 
infinite quantity of energy. They have all been heated 
within finite time, and within comparatively recent 
time; otherwise they would have radiated all of their 
radiant energy into space, and be at present cold, 
invisible bodies. : 

There is no physical theory that can account satis- 
factorily for the mighty hosts of stars, each highly 
heated, circling through infinite space, each in its own 
orbit. We can hardly imagine that all the matter of 
the universe was originally one highly heated, revolving 
mass, and that in some way this mass became separated 
into the countless worlds that are widely scattered 
through space. We can imagine that the sun and stars 
have been heated by collisions with other masses of 
matter, but we know of no way by which the great 

128 


GOD IN THE WORLD 





number of worlds could have come into existence as 
separate masses before they collided. 

‘‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the 
earth.’’ The Hebrew writer could not have made this 
statement as a scientific conclusion, for he had no 
science. It could have come only as a revelation from 
God. The infinite Designer made himself known to 
man. ‘‘Look at the heavens and the earth; they are 
my work,’’ he said to man, as he gazed in blank wonder 
into the infinite heavens. The conclusion that ‘‘God 
created the heavens and the earth’’ was a revelation is 
based on the scientific method. It could have come in 
no other way. We are justified in attributing a suffi- 
cient cause to every event. 

‘The announcement that ‘‘God created man in his 
own image’’ is an evident revelation. It brings man 
into the most intimate relation, into the most exalted 
fellowship, with the Creator of the universe. It is the 
assurance that man can think God’s thoughts correctly, 
and hold communion with him—a declaration of the 
immortality of the soul of man, because it is the image 
of the immortal God. Man was no dreamer when that 
idea came to him. It came from God. 

Let us next consider some of the evidences of design 
with regard to the earth. Emerson has said: ‘‘Nature 
is too thin a screen: the glory of the omnipresent God 
bursts through everywhere.’? Thus spoke America’s 
most celebrated writer. Bacon said: ‘‘I had rather 
believe all the fables in the Talmud and the Koran, | 
than that this universal frame is without a mind.’’ 

It is an old and true saying that ‘‘the stream can 
not rise above its source.’’ It is also true that the 
things that exist on the earth can not be more exalted 

129 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


ee 


than the. power that created them. I have elsewhere 
written of man, who, by means of his mind, has domi- 
nated all forces and materials on the earth, and that he 
has thus demonstrated that his soul is not in the image 
of anything earthly. The mind of man, which unlocks 
the secrets of the universe, places him in a world infi- 
nitely above everything else on earth. 

In speaking of design, I shall especially have in 
view the well-being of man as the central thought. Be- 
fore doing this, however, it is important to consider 
certain facts in nature which have to do with the 
existence of any living thing upon the earth. As stated 
elsewhere, the earth underwent a long period of prepa- 
ration before living things were introduced. 

Animals and plants can endure a very limited range 
of temperature. The freezing and boiling points of 
water are practically the limits through which any of 
them can live, and most of them are limited to a much 
smaller range of temperature. The distance of the 
earth from the sun gives the earth a temperature that 
is favorable to living things. The daily and yearly 
motions of the earth, together with the inclination of 
the earth’s axis to the ecliptic, thus producing a change 
of seasons, are also favorable to the distribution of 
heat, especially in the temperate and polar regions. 

The existence of immense quantities of water over 
most of the face of the earth, and the movements of the 
ocean currents, greatly aid in the retention and the 
distribution of heat. 

The general rule is that when substances pass from 
the liquid to the solid form they contract so that the 
specific gravity of the solid becomes greater than that 
of the liquid; but in the case of water it expands on 

130 


GOD IN THE WORLD 





freezing, so that ice floats on water. This is a fact of 
great importance in nature. If it sank, it would not be 
melted in deep water in summer, and the lakes and 
parts of the ocean that are frozen in winter would be- 
eome filled with ice and would destroy all life. 

The evaporation of water into the air, at all tem- 
peratures, and the distribution of this moisture in the 
form of rain, dew, snow, frost, etc., for the benefit of 
living things, is most important. 

Every living thing requires water. Water consti- 
tutes the greater part of the weight of most animals 
and of many plants, especially during their most active 
growth. 

The atmosphere that exists everywhere around the 
earth, and that exerts an average pressure at the sea- 
level of about fifteen pounds to the square inch, is most 
important in connection with life. The air is a mixture 
of about 78 per cent. of nitrogen, 21 per cent. of oxy- 
gen, and 1 per cent. of argon, a small fraction of 1 per 
eent. of carbon dioxide (about one volume in 3,300), 
together with a variable per cent. of moisture and 
traces of other substances. 

The most abundant ingredient (nitrogen) does not 
support combustion ; but it dilutes the oxygen, which is 
the combustible element. It is of the utmost importance 
as a source of supply of nitrogen for plant growth, 
after having been brought by certain bacteria into 
suitable combinations to serve as food for plants. The 
supply in the air is practically inexhaustible. 

Oxygen, the next most abundant element, is a neces- 
sary part of the atmosphere, for the reason that all 
animals must have free oxygen for breathing, which 
they obtain mostly from the air; while others, that live 

131 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


REE 


in the water, obtain free oxygen from solution in water. 
If its per cent. were much increased in the air, confla- 
erations would become more destructive. If the air 
were mostly oxygen, the earth would be swept by fires. 

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is but a small 
fraction of one per cent., but it is absolutely necessary. 
Ordinary plants obtain all of their carbon for growth 
from this source. It is absorbed by the leaves and the 
green parts of plants, and, under the influence of sun- 
shine, the carbon dioxide is decomposed into carbon and 
oxygen. The former is retained for plant growth and 
the latter is given off into the air for the use of animals. 
The carbon dioxide is renewed continually in the air 
by the decomposition of organic matter and of carbon- 
ates, and by the ordinary combustion of carbon as fuel. 

The moisture in the air, in addition to the purposes 
named, serves as a blanket to prevent the rapid radia- 
tion of heat by the earth into space. In a clear, dry 
atmosphere the nights are very cool, owing to the rapid 
radiation of heat by the earth into space; and the days 
are correspondingly hot. 

I have considered briefly the position and motions 
of the earth, the existence and distribution of water, 
air and heat, and have shown briefly how they con- 
tribute to the existence and well-being of living things. 
It does not seem to me that either chance or evolution 
could have brought about so many things that are 
necessary for the existence of plants and animals. 

But let us consider the elements—the simple sub- 
stances—that must exist on the surface of the earth 
before living things could exist here at all. All plants 
and animals must have, as a part of their body, carbon, 
hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. The human body con- 

132 


GOD IN THE WORLD 





tains sixteen or more elements. In addition to the 
above are calcium and phosphorus, which, together with 
oxygen, form calcium phosphate, which is necessary for 
bones; and calcium carbonate is the principal mineral 
in shells. Iron is a necessary part of the blood; sodium 
and chlorine, in the form of common salt, must be in 
the fluids and tissues of the body; other elements in 
the human body are sulphur, fluorine, silicon, potas- 
sium, lithium, magnesium and manganese. These six- 
teen elements are obtained from the food that is taken 
into the body. Most of these substances are known to 
be necessary constituents of the human body, and they 
were necessary to the plants and animals that furnished 
them as foods for man. These simple substances must 
be present in available conditions in the world before 
the organisms that require them could exist here. The 
preparation of these building materials for the organic 
world was not due to blind chance. 

Let us consider this in some detail. Carbon, oxygen, 
hydrogen and nitrogen are a necessary part of the body 
of every living thing. By their union in all living 
things they form protoplasm, the ‘‘basis of life,’’ which 
is the most essential substance in every living thing. 
Frequently, if not always, a little sulphur is included 
in the composition of protoplasm, and sometimes a trace 
of iron. This substance constitutes most of the tissues 
of animals except fats and the earthy part of bones. 

Protoplasm, under different names, differs much in 
its physical and chemical composition; but it always 
contains the four elements named, and generally sul- 
phur, and sometimes a trace of iron. The formulas for 
proteins are extremely complex, being composed of a 
great number of atoms. For example, the formula for 

133 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





haemoglobin of dog’s blood contains 2,378 atoms. The 
great complexity of the proteins, with the fact that they 
eontain a large per cent. of nitrogen, an element of 
feeble affinities, indicates that they are very unstable— 
that the molecules readily go to pieces. 

The diamond in its colorless crystalline form is pure 
earbon. Plumbago (or black lead), charcoal and 
anthracite coal are other forms of carbon, mixed with 
more or less impurities. A large part of the carbon in 
the world has been deposited from vegetable growth as 
bituminous and anthracite coal, and as lignite and peat, 
for the service of man. Petroleum and natural gas in 
immense quantities are composed largely of carbon and 
hydrogen, both of which are highly combustible. A 
large quantity of carbon is locked up in the form of 
carbonates of calcium (limestone), and carbonates of 
iron, copper and other metals. 

In the early geological ages the air was much richer 
in carbon dioxide than it is at present. The carbon of 
all coal must have existed as carbon dioxide in the air 
before plants could have furnished carbon for coal. At 
that time the air contained too much earbon dioxide 
for the existence of the higher animals. It is the suffo- 
cating gas that all animals exhale with every expira- 
tion. Beyond a certain per cent. in the air, the higher 
animals can not live in it. 

But, as stated, plants get all their carbon from the 
small fraction of one per cent. of carbon dioxide in the 
air. If carbon had been absent from the earth, no 
living thing could exist here. The life of plants depends 
on the one volume of carbon dioxide in 3,300 of the 
air, their only source of supply. This small fraction of 
one per cent. furnishes abundance of carbon food for 

134 


GOD IN THE WORLD 





“ 


plants, and it is not injurious to animals. Plants are 
adapted, by their millions of breathing-pores in their 
leaves, to breathe it in; and in that most wonderful of 
all laboratories, chlorophyl, by the aid of sunshine, to 
decompose it and to elaborate the carbon into proto- 
plasm, starch, sugar, woody fiber, and into many other 
complex compounds that are of use to both plants and 
animals. 

But see the narrow escape that occurred here, that 
left but a small margin for life. It is easy to imagine 
that the various metals with which carbon dioxide com- 
bines to form carbonates might have drained the air 
completely of all the carbon dioxide it contained, thus 
leaving the land forever destitute of all plants and of 
all animals dependent on plants for food. Blind chance 
did not see her opportunity and prepare this element. 
in so many useful ways. 

Oxygen is a gas. It is the most abundant of all 
elements in the known part of the earth. It constitutes 
nearly half of the crust of the earth, eight-ninths the 
weight of water, and from one-fourth to one-fifth the 
weight of the atmosphere. It combines with nearly all 
the known elements. It is a necessary part of all living 
things. It was necessary that it exist in combination 
as solids, combined with hydrogen as water, and free 
in the air for-animals and plants. Its most abundant. 
compounds in the crust of the earth are silica, silicates, 
carbonates and oxides. These, for the most part, are 
very insoluble in water, and they furnish stable mate-- 
rials for the crust of the earth and many valuable 
minerals. 

It was necessary that it should exist in great excess 
over other elements. The amount that forms nearly 

135 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





half the weight of the crust of the earth is enormous. 
Owing to its great affinity for the other elements, the 
whole supply would readily have combined with the 
minerals that form the solid crust of the earth, if suffi- 
cient amounts of these had been available; but we find 
that, after all available materials to form solids had 
been oxidized, there was still an enormous volume of 
free oxygen left, which combined with the gas, hydro- 
gen, and formed enough water to cover the whole earth 
about two miles in depth. Water is absolutely neces- 
sary for all living things. And still this great amount 
did not exhaust the supply of free oxygen. There was 
enough left free in the air for all forms of life. It was 
necessary for life that oxygen exist free, in combination 
to form water and also the solid crust of the earth. 
Can we imagine that blind chance foresaw the necessity 
of the element itself to living things, and determined 
not only that it should be, but that it should exist in the 
enormous quantity required? Verily not. Intelligent 
foresight and beneficent power alone will account for it. 

Hydrogen, the lightest known substance, exists on 
the earth mostly in the form of water. It is a neces- 
sary part of every living thing. Without it, living 
organisms could not exist. If it had been greatly in 
excess of what it is, it would have robbed the air of its 
free oxygen to form water. Hydrogen is the chief 
element that combines with carbon to form natural oils 
and the various kinds of petroleum. It is also an im- 
portant constituent of the various bituminous coals, of 
‘woody fiber, and of most of the tissues of plants and 
animals. 

Nitrogen is a fourth element that is necessary for 
the existence of all living things. It is mostly free, as 

136 


GOD IN THE WORLD 


TE LS 


a part of the air, of which it constitutes about 79 per 
cent. It is noted for its small range of chemical affini- 
ties, for it combines directly with but few other ele- 
ments. Chemically, it stands almost at the other ex- 
treme from oxygen, which unites with almost every 
element. On account of its feeble chemism its com- 
pounds enter into most of the explosives that are used 
in warfare and elsewhere. It serves to dilute the 
oxygen of the air, and it furnishes a perpetual supply 
to bacteria, which prepare its compounds as food for 
plants. It helps to form the living, working tissues of 
all animals of which muscular tissue is the most abun- 
dant. 

If nitrogen had existed in the earth in small quan- 
tity, it might all be locked up in nitrates, ammonium 
compounds, and other compounds which are very solu- 
ble in water; and it might all be washed down into 
the ocean, where it could serve no good purpose in sup- 
porting land plants. Its abundance furnishes an inex- 
haustible supply for plants. It is also being oxidized 
artificially in great quantities to form nitric acid, from 
which nitrates are formed as fertilizers and for other 
purposes. The hand that put nitrogen in the earth, as 
one of the elements necessary to build living things, 
and assured a perpetual supply, was guided by intelli- 
gent foresight. 

I have considered the fact that the above four 
elements must be in the world before any known living 
thing could exist. Not only that, but they must be 
here in the proper quantities to insure the various 
things required by living organisms. It was a question 
not only of the quality of the elements, but also of their 
relative quantities, that would insure the existence of 

137 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





living things. From what I have said, we see that both 
purposes have been wisely served. We are here in a 
region where neither chance, nor atheistic, nor agnostic 
evolution can meet the case. It required an intelligent, 
living God to prepare the materials for the construc- 
tion and welfare of living things. 

Twelve other elements enter into the composition of 
the human body, that I have not considered in detail. 
Sulphur, phosphorus, chlorine, sodium, potassium, cal- 
cium, magnesium and iron, we know, are necessary. If 
any one of these elements had been as relatively abun- 
dant as oxygen, the earth would have remained a desert 
waste. If one of them had been omitted, man could 
not exist. The probability, according to any doctrine 
of chance, that no one of these would be omitted and 
that they would exist in the proper relative quantities 
favorable to man’s existence, is utterly beyond the 
range of human reason. 

But the preparation of the earth for man went infi- 
nitely beyond providing the materials that were neces- 
sary for his existence. The earth has been blessed with 
a countless number of things that man has been able to 
utilize for his comfort and welfare. With his ever- 
growing knowledge he has converted to his use the 
objects and.forces within his reach. The foresight that 
planned his existence intended that he should reach the 
highest material and spiritual point of prosperity. The 
means were placed within his reach to call forth his 
greatest activity of body and the highest intelligence 
and wisdom that can possibly be attained. 

The world was made a great training-school, in 
which all things were placed for the training of man. 
The material prizes are given to him who with the keys 

138 : 


GOD IN THE WORLD 





of knowledge unlocks the doors to the halls in which 
Nature has kept hidden many of her most valuable 
secrets. Witness, for example, Edison, who has taken 
out many hundreds of patents, and has wrung from the 
very heart of nature many of the greatest things that 
bless the world. The commercial value of his inven- 
tions mounts into untold millions of dollars, while the 
moral and intellectual value of his achievements, which 
proclaim the patient, persistent, thoughtful dominion 
of mind over material nature, is beyond price. 

*‘Subdue the earth’’ and ‘‘have dominion’’ was the 
ancient command that still has all the vital power that 
it had in the beginning. Man is ever coming into his 
own. The doors of nature, with increased velocity, are 
opening wide and revealing the treasures that lie be- 
yond. Each open door reveals another that invites the 
key of knowledge. 

The savage sees little in the world, and he seeks the 
simplest means of eking out an unfruitful existence. 
He knows little of the metals and jewels and the many 
rich treasures that lie hidden in the earth. He is 
generally ignorant of the most valuable products of the 
soil. The trees of the forest are of no worth to him. 
The ocean is an unknown infinity, peopled with objects 
of fear. The heavens are filled with dread omens. The 
world is often peopled with frightful ghosts. He has 
learned no use for most of the things that are found 
in the world. The little world in which ae lives is to 
him a poor training-school. 

But when we turn to the man who has learned to 
subdue and have dominion, we see a transformed being. 
This man searches the heavens, the earth and the sea 
for treasures. He brings up from the depths of 

139 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





the earth the ores of iron, copper, aluminum, lead, 
zinc, manganese, and ores of other metals, reduces 
them, and uses them for a thousand useful purposes é 
that help to improve the world as a habitation for 
men. 

Without iron, especially in the form of steel, the 
wheels of civilization would stand still. Without cop- 
per, the manufacture of electricity would be crippled 
and largely destroyed. The quantity of these two 
metals used every year, more than anything else, per- 
haps, marks the material progress of civilization. 

The means of rapid transit by the use of steam and 
electricity, the telegraph in its various forms—on land, 
submarine and wireless—the telephone and phonograph, 
moving pictures and electric lights, are a few of the 
recent steps taken towards subduing the earth. 

The adaptations of the thousands of things in the 
world to the supply of man’s wants are evident. For 
the most part, the raw materials are placed before him, 
and it is necessary that his knowledge, skill and inven- 
tive genius be brought into action to convert them to 
his use. The attainment of most of the great blessings 
is made an educational process, by which man is 
brought into closer communion with nature. 

Did it just happen by chance that iron, the most 
useful of all metals, is one of the most abundant and 
easy of access? Did chance provide in abundance the 
coal and the limestone that are so necessary in reducing 
iron from the ore to the metallic form? Did chance 
provide the various rarer metals that are necessary in 
the manufacture of steel of various qualities? Did 
chance deposit the abundant ores of copper, lead, zine 
and manganese, and the gold, platinum, silver and mer- 

140 ” 


GOD IN THE WORLD 





cury? Without dwelling on this further, it is evident, 
I think, that a being who had intelligent purpose not. 
only provided the materials necessary for the con- 
struction of man’s body, but ten thousand things be- 
sides, that contribute to his comfort and welfare. 

In this chapter I have said nothing about man him- 
self. In the Patent Office at Washington are many 
thousands of models. These models embody the thoughts. 
of the thousands of people who desired patents on their 
inventions. A great many of the models represent. 
machines that could be used in doing useful work. 
Many of them represent the highest intelligence and 
skill, and some of them stand for many years of patient: 
thought and labor. If, after having examined these. 
models and seen many of them work, the observer 
should conclude that they just happened by chance, and. 
that the mind of man had nothing to do with their 
existence, we would without hesitation decide that the 
place for this person was the asylum for the insane— 
and the ward for the most demented. 

If among these models we should find one machine 
that could devise the most complicated and valuable 
machine in the Patent Office, and compel it to perform 
the most useful work; if this one machine, among the 
thousands of dead models, were alive and charged with 
power by the use of which it could move and work and 
invent all successful models in the Patent Office—we 
would be obliged to look upon it with wonder, and we 
would declare that this living, self-moving, self-repair- 
ing, devising, directing machine, that knew all the 
secrets and all the possibilities of the ten thousand 
machines by which it was surrounded, was supreme 
over all the inventions of men. If the models showed, 

141 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


a 


the unmistakable design of man, did not the man, the 
master mechanic, show beyond doubt that his Maker 
designed him? I do not see how we can escape this 
conclusion. 

Man’s body is the most wonderful mechanism in 
all the world. His many bones serve in the best way 
for protection and as levers for motion. To the bones, 
the muscles, made up of countless fibers, are securely 
attached by ligaments and tendons. The muscular fibers 
are made to contract by the aid of the nervous system, 
and they give infinite varieties of motion to the trunk 
and its members. Many tissues compose the various 
organs of the body, each of which serves its special pur- 
pose. The brain, made up of an infinite number of 
microscopic cells and fibers, sends its afferent and 
efferent fibers, like telegraph wires, to all parts of the 
body, over which messages travel to and from the brain 
as a center. This system of telegraphy is vastly more 
complex than is the most complicated office. Sta- 
tions of communication with the brain, in endless num- 
ber, are located in all parts of the body. Through the 
nervous system the body experiences sensations of many 
kinds and for special purposes, that give knowledge of 
its own condition and of the external world at all finite 
distances. 

Man has a conscious memory, which brings the past 
into the present, and enables him to utilize past experi- 
ence. He has the power of reason, which co-ordinates 
experiences and draws logical conclusions. He has the 
power to observe facts and to know the truth, and to 
make them contribute to his purposes. He has an 
imagination that constructs an ideal world and enables 
him to live in an ideal future. 

142 


GOD IN THE WORLD 





With his special senses he lays hold on the material 
universe. His eye receives the light that has traveled 
for thousands of years from distant stars. The eye 
responds with pleasure to all the shades of color that 
come from the rainbow and the clouds, and that. are 
flashed from the sparkling gems by their many facets. 
It revels in the shapes and colors of beautiful flowers, 
and the wonderful plumage of birds, and the many- 
tinted shells from the depths of the ocean. It glories 
in the gorgeous sunsets, in the mighty expanse of the 
ocean, in valley and mountain, in river and lake; in 
grazing flocks and herds, and in fields of verdure and 
waving, golden grain; it revels in the forests of trees 
of noble growth, among whose branches dwell securely 
beautiful birds of joyful song, that build their nests in 
hope, to rear their young. Through the eye of man 
are revealed to him the infinite glories of land and 
sea and of the countless worlds above. It is the 
one avenue through which enters his mind beauty of 
form, motion and color—the one sense that enables 
him to lay hold on all materials and forces, and 
bring them under his dominion. ‘‘And God saw 
everything that he had made, and, behold, it was 
very good.’’ 

The ear enables man to hold converse with his fel- 
low-men in audible language that conveys all shades of 
thought and feeling. Through the sense of hearing 
enter the human soul the terrors of hell of the modern 
battlefield—the deafening roar of the mighty cannon, 
the demoniacal shriek and bursting of shells, the groans 
and piteous cries of wounded and dying men—a pande- 
monium of all the discordant, heart-rending sounds of 
hell combined. 

10 143 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





The same ear can drink in with delight the joyful 
songs of the birds, the soft music of the brooks rippling 
over the stones, the soughing of the wind at eventide 
among the trees, the sacred music of the chimes calling — 
to divine service, the rich and stately music of some 
great choir, the more than angelic notes of Melba or 
Caruso, the divine strains of the violin in the hands of 
Kubelik, the rich melodies that. flow from the piano 
under the magic touch of Paderewski, the stately and 
magnificent voice a great cathedral organ sends forth in 
response to the touch of a master hand, a symphony by 
Beethoven rendered by some great orchestra, flooding 
the world with music—all these and vastly more flow in 
through the ear, as food to the soul. ‘‘Music hath 
charms to soothe the savage breast, to soften rocks, and 
bend the knotted oak.’’ ‘‘He that made the ear, can 
he not hear ?’’ 

The sense of taste is gratified by ten thousand 
flavors of delicious foods that nourish the human body. 

The sense of smell revels in the sweet fragrance dis- 
tilled from the plants of forest and field, and from the 
many sweet flowers that bloom in this garden of God. 

The senses of touch, temperature and pressure are 
more local in their action, but they enable us to deter- 
mine certain conditions and qualities of things and our 
relations to them—all of great importance to the wel- 
fare of man. 

Thus we see that the doors of special sense are great 
avenues to the soul of man, through which enter count- 
less facts from the external world. Without these senses 
man’s existence here would be impossible. They open 
up to him infinite fields, and enable him to enter, sub- 
due, and have dominion. If the printing-press shows 

144 


GOD IN THE WORLD 


design by man, then man, the designer, is evidence of a 
still greater Designer. The designer is greater than the 
thing designed. If the creation of the press required 
thought, the creation of man, with his world-wide rela- 
tions and powers, demanded intelligence vastly greater 
than that of man. 

In this chapter I have not considered man as a 
moral, religious and spiritual being. Conscience deter- 
mines the moral quality of things, and compels man to 
decide that one thing is right and another wrong. It 
gives the feeling of responsibility for human conduct. 
No animal has conscience. The train of mathematical 
reasoning which led Le Verrier to the discovery of the 
planet Neptune lifts man infinitely above the level of 
the brute creation. 

Faith and hope and universal Christian love, which 
lead men and women to sacrifice all in order to redeem 
humanity in every land and every clime, proclaim 
man’s divinity. 

Man’s spiritual nature calls for a living God. He 
has an essentially religious nature, though it may be 
weighted and cramped with a thousand superstitions. 
When God is properly presented, as is being done in 
equatorial Africa, men forget their heathen customs, 
become clothed in body and in their right mind, and 
become joyful worshipers of the one true God. The 
transformation in many cases is most radical and 
permanent. Human nature everywhere responds to 
God. A belief in God and Christ brings joy and glad- 
ness to men who for ages have sat in spiritual dark- 
ness. ‘‘If you knew about God and Christ, why did 
you not come sooner?’’ has been an urgent question 
asked by the blacks on the Congo. These people are 

145 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





hungry for God and Christ, though they have sat in 
darkness thousands of years. A knowledge of the one 
God who created the heavens and the earth, and a be- 
lief in him and a feeling. of responsibility and obligation 
to him, transform the souls of men and lift them into 
a new spiritual world where they enjoy the fellowship 
and love of the Father as revealed by Christ. Men 
want God the Father as Christ has revealed him. ‘‘He 
that hath seen me hath seen the Father.”’ 

Man’s innate cry for God points to the fact that 
God is; for we know that every natural desire possessed 
by man finds ample means for its gratification. A god- 
less universe, when the soul cries out for the living 
God, would be a contradiction in the spiritual world. 
‘“What and whence this strange desire, this longing 
after immortality?’’ The aspiration is the pledge of 
God in the soul, the assurance that the soul can not 
cease to be. ‘‘In the image of God created he him.’’ 
This image does not cease to be. 

I have written enough about design. The man who 
can not see God in the things to which I have referred 
would not believe though God should speak to him from 
heaven with the voice of the seven thunders and the 
terrible lightnings of Sinai. 

There remains untouched the great world of life, 
eomposed of hundreds of thousands of species. Un- 
doubtedly they manifest design in infinite and marvel- 
ous ways. The fact that they live and propagate their 
kind shows that they are adapted to the conditions 
under which they live. It is not necessary that I should 
see design in every living thing before I conclude that 
there is design in the things created—no more than it 
would be necessary for me to understand every model 

146 


GOD IN THE WORLD 





in the Patent Office before I might conclude that there 
is design in any one of the models. Design shown in 
one case shows that there was a designer. The fact 
that we can not see the design does not prove that it 
does not exist. The civilized man sees design in a thou- 
sand things that escape the savage. Ignorance can not 
interpret God’s works. 

This subject opens up too wide a field for me to 
enter. Besides, as stated, I do not deem it necessary 
to the argument. There is one manifest purpose that 
all organic beings serve, and that is the enrichment of 
the soil by the decomposition of their bodies after 
death. Organic remains are decomposed largely by 
bacteria, the lowest of organisms, thus furnishing food 
for plants. The despised fishing-worm is one of the 
most important agents that render the soil more fertile. 
Mr. Darwin has written a book on this subject. 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





IX 
MIRACLES 


HEN God does something which the processes of 

nature could not do without his aid, we call it 
a miracle. The raising of the dead, the turning of 
water into wine, the sudden healing of a leper, were 
miracles. We recognize at once that in each of these 
eases a work is done that nature could not perform. 
But God may direct the forces of nature in such a way 
as to perform miracles. It is said in Exodus that 
‘‘ Jehovah turned an exceeding strong west wind, which 
took up the locusts, and drove them into the Red Sea.’’ 

Again, it is said that ‘‘ Jehovah caused the sea to go 
back by a strong east wind all the night, and made the 
sea dry land, and the waters were divided.’’ It is 
apparent from the circumstances that these winds 
would not have thus blown except for the intervention 
of Jehovah for these special purposes. : 

It is evident, from what I have stated in the chapter 
on theistic evolution, that no miracle can be included 
as a part of the process of cosmic evolution, whether 
the theory is theistic or atheistic, because it would be 
a break in the necessarily continuous process. The diffi- 
culty here is irreconcilable—the miracles of Christ must 
be denied if cosmic evolution is true. Some have tried 
to escape the difficulty by calling the cosmic theistic 
process of evolution a continuous miracle, but this is 

148 


MIRACLES 





no solution. It is only a statement that theistic evolu- 
tion is a universal process. It can not include the 
miracles of Christ. 

I have called attention to the fact that evolution is 
only a theory, and that it has no standing as the 
universal science which it must claim to be. The man 
who accepts it, even as a working hypothesis in teach- 
ing, will find that he has a hopeless case when he tries 
to adjust its claims to the teaching of Christ. He will 
find, also, that the authors who have written the texts 
on the basis of evolution repudiate all miracles. I feel 
sure that no exception to this can be found. 

I am not saying that one can not accept parts of 
evolution and still believe in miracles. In such a case 
a man ought not to deceive himself by thinking that he 
is a cosmic evolutionist. The theory of universal scope 
is that which all the great evolutionists accepted and 
tried to establish. 

If I believed in cosmic evolution, I would be com- 
pelled to say miracles are impossible. No ground would 
be left on which to base them. Regarding evolution as 
only a theory, the way is open to consider miracles. 

I do not, however, deem it important to give much 
time to this subject, after what I have written in pre- 
vious chapters. To my mind, various special acts of the 
Creator were necessary during the process of creation. 
I have called attention especially, in the previous chap- 
ter, to the preparation of the elements of proper kinds 
and in proper quantities for the existence of living things 
upon the earth, and especially to the multitude of ele- 
ments that serve to form man’s body, and the many 
others that serve the purposes of civilized man. This 
preparation was due to intelligent, miraculous power. 

149 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





I have ealled attention to the fact that Mr. Darwin 
claims that life was ‘‘originally breathed by the Creator 
into a few forms or into one.’’ He felt obliged to begin 
with a miracle. As we ascend the scale of life we come 
to many places where any theory of evolution fails, 
and where it demanded special acts of the Creator in 
order to ascend. This is true with regard to many 
physical structures, and remarkably true as we ascend 
through the psychological world, from the simplest feel- 
ing of the lowest animal up to the mind of man, with 
its multitudes of wonderful powers. 

An automobile could never come into existence by 
natural processes without the aid of man. In con- 
structing it, man has only availed himself of the mate- 
rials and forces of nature, and has strictly obeyed their 
laws. This human miracle was not a lawless process, 
but at every step the forces of nature were directed 
according to their laws. Were God to make an auto- 
mobile as man makes it, its manufacture would be a 
miracle, and yet no law of nature would have 
been broken. Man blows blasts of air for carrying 
sand and other materials. God caused the wind to 
earry the locusts into the Red Sea. We know how 
man moves the air, but we know not how God moved 
it in performing a miracle. Both show the dominance 
of spirit. 

Man directs power, by intelligent purpose, to the 
performing of special work—work that could never be 
done without his mind. He is the great disturber of 
the processes of nature. He has turned the world up- 
side down with his human miracles. Without him the 
earth would be a wilderness in which thoughtless beasts 
would reign supreme. 

150 


MIRACLES 





A miracle is the triumph of an intelligent, higher 
power over the powers that be, in accordance with laws. 
Law is a most beneficent provision that God has made, 
by the knowledge and aid of which man can dominate 
the world. That the sequences of nature take place 
according to certain definite methods insures the suc- 
eess of man. All things that he does with intelligent 
purpose are human miracles. That God has less liberty 
of choice and execution than has the man that he has 
made is incredible. That he has so bound himself that 
he has less freedom than man, in the affairs of the 
earth, is beyond belief. That natural processes known 
to man are God’s only methods of doing things, we can 
not logically conclude. 

The fact that man’s spirit was made in the image 
of God is assurance that God specially cares for him. 
It is conceivable and probable that God, in promoting 
man’s spiritual good, has made himself known in reve- 
lations, and answers to prayers, and by special works, 
all of which were miracles, or of a miraculous nature. 

The chief end of all things on earth is spiritual. 
Without this aim, the world would lapse into gross 
materialism. ‘‘God is a spirit: and they that worship 
him must worship in spirit and truth.’’ The vital 
relation between the spirit of man and God is the 
supreme end of man’s existence. 

Science, as such, knows nothing of miracles. It does 
not lie within her province to either affirm or deny 
them. They are beyond her domain. For her to de- 
elare their impossibility is a dogmatic assumption. 
Science knows not the possibilities of the universe, nor 
all the ways of God. The striving, praying, yearning 
souls of men, crying out for the living God and seeking 

151 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


— ce LLL 


immortality, speak volumes that science can not under- 
stand. The measure of the soul’s aspirations, or of 
faith and hope, or of a mother’s love, is not according 
to the standards of science. The soul of man sits veiled 
in flesh, but it seeks and knows the light, and believes 
that infinite opportunities lie beyond. 

The only perfect being, clothed in human flesh, who 
ever trod the earth, claimed, when here, that he worked 
miracles. This witness is unimpeached and unimpeach- 
able. If the record of his miracles were stricken from | 
the Evangelists, his veracity as a witness would perish. 
These miracles are so natural and so interwoven in the 
narratives of his life that they can not be eliminated 
without destroying the value of these biographies. 

It is said repeatedly that after witnessing Christ’s 
miracles the people believed on him. For the most part, 
his miracles were works of mercy; but they attested his 
divinity. No man could do the works that Christ did 
unless God was with him, and God would not be with 
an impostor. ‘‘I came down from heaven to do my 
Father’s will.’’ He placed the highest value on his 
miracles as evidence when, in answer to John’s inquiry 
as to whether he was the Christ or not, he said to 
John’s two disciples who had been sent: ‘‘Go and tell 
John the things which ye hear and see: the blind re- 
eeive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are 
cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised 
up, and the poor have good tidings preached to them.’’ 

The tendency among many of late has been to force 
Christ down onto the purely human plane, but the true 
Christian heart will ever crown him King of kings and 
Lord of lords. 


152 


THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION 





x 
THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION * 


VOLUME entitled ‘‘The Method of Evolution,’’ 
by H. W. Conn, of comparatively recent date, is 
worthy of consideration. This writer is an avowed 
evolutionist, who claims that the fact of organic evolu- 
tion has been established beyond doubt, so that it need 
not be further discussed. He says: ‘‘ We find nowhere 
to-day any thought of discussing this question any 
more than discussing the truth of the law of gravita- 
tion. We have less of this discussion than a few years 
ago simply because science regards it as beyond discus- 
sion and accepts it as a demonstrated conclusion.’’ He 
also says that ‘‘it would probably be impossible to find 
among modern scientists any one who would venture to 
hold any other opinion.’’ I presume that such a rash 
person would be under taboo! a curse that pursues unto 
death. By the array of scientific talent which admits 
the fact of evolution, one is, especially if young, prac- 
tically barred from considering the question at all; for 
by so doing he would put in jeopardy his sound scien- 
tific training, if not his mental sanity. 
But to me there are so many seeming impossibilities 
in any theory of evolution that I venture to call in 
question the truth of the above assumption. 





*“The Method of Evolution.”?’ A review of the present attitude of 
science toward the question of the laws and forces which have brought 
about the origin of species, by H. W. Conn, of Wesleyan University, 1900. 


153 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





The author’s book bears the date, 1900. It had not 
been long before this (1892) that ‘‘Darwin and After 
Darwin,’’ by Romanes, and ‘‘Evolution in Its Relation 
to Religious Thought’’ (1888), by Le Conte, were 
published. These able writers and others of the 
time dwell at length on evidence tending to prove 
the fact of evolution. They felt the necessity of doing 
this. My own belief is that to call evolution an estab- 
lished conclusion of science is to disgrace the word 
‘“seience.”’ 

Organic evolution, as Professor Conn recognizes, is 
but part of the whole theory. The theory must be dealt 
with in its entirety as a unit, if we would deal with it 
properly. ; 

The writer says: ‘‘For a long time the term ‘evolu- 
tion’ was, to most persons, synonymous with the idea 
of organic evolution, the broader aspects of the prob- 
lem being overlooked. The term ‘evolution’ is cer- 
tainly much broader than the simple problem of the 
origin of plants and animals. At the same time it is 
so evident that organic evolution forms the keystone of 
the evolutionary arch, without which it would fall to 
pieces, that the whole debate for years centered around 
the problems of organic evolution.’’ 

Le Conte has said that ‘‘evolution is universal.’’ 
‘‘The process pervades the whole universe, and the 
doctrine concerns alike every department of science— 
yea, every department of human thought. Therefore, 
its truth or falseness, its acceptance or rejection, is no 
trifling matter, affecting only one small corner of the 
thought realm. .. . It determines the whole attitude of 
the mind towards nature and God.’’ Evolution is re- 
garded by some as the ‘‘universal science.’’ It includes 

154 


THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION 





all the materials and forces and events in the universe. 
It includes all events of all kinds in all time. 

In a limited way, and more specific, the solar system 
is a product of evolution. The earth as a planet in this 
system was slowly evolved through the long ages, and 
was thus made a fit place for living things. This theory 
holds that the first living things were produced by the 
same forces that had been previously at work—first, 
plants, then the simplest animals with the sense of feel- 
ing, then higher animals with various kinds of sensa- 
tion, also the special senses, sight, hearing, ete.; then 
the instincts of animals, from the simplest to the most 
complex, and finally man, with his godlike powers of 
mind, was evolved by the same natural forces. All 
human history is included in the process of evolution. 

Evolution may be compared to a steamer headed up 
a river 1 which are many falls and cataracts. This 
steamer, in her upward course, arrives in front of the 
first fall, a Niagara, where it must pass from the dead 
up to the living world. There is no amount of steam 
that can send the vessel up over this fall. All efforts 
to drive it upward from the region of death to that of 
life end in absolute failure. The scientific world, with 
one voice, admits this to be a fact. Evidently there 
can be no basis for organic evolution till organic beings 
appear. 

Professor Conn, writing of this, says: ‘‘An import- 
ant part of the evolution problem is, of course, the 
origin of life, which appears to mean the origin of the 
first protoplasm. Upon this subject it must be con- 
fessed we are in as deep ignorance as ever. Indeed, if 
anything, the disclosures of the modern microscope have 
placed the evolution of this problem even further from 

155 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





our grasp. So long as we could regard protoplasm as 
a chemical compound, definite, though complex, so long 
was it possible to believe that its origin in the past 
geological ages was a simple matter of chemical affinity. 
It was easy to assume that, under the conditions of 
earlier ages, when chemical elements were necessarily 
placed in different relations to each other from those 
of to-day, chemical combinations could arise which 
would result in the formation of the complex body, 
protoplasm. This has been the supposition that has 
laid the foundation of various suggestions as to the 
origin of life. But having now learned that this life 
substance is not a chemical compound, but a mechan- 
ism, and that its properties are dependent upon its 
mechanism, such a conception of the origin of life is 
no longer tenable. In its place must be substituted 
some forces which build a mechanism. But even our 
most extreme evolutionists have not yet suggested any 
method of bridging the chasm, and at the present time 
we must recognize that the problem of the origin of 
life is in greater obscurity than ever. The origin of 
chemical compounds we may explain, but their combi- 
nation into the organic machine which we call proto- 
plasm is, at present, unimaginable. 

‘‘So far as we know, wnorganized protoplasm does 
not exist. The properties of life appear to be mani- 
fested by nothing simpler than the organic cell. Every- 
thing that grows and reproduces is in some degree 
differentiated into cells, and the cell seems to be thus 
the simplest condition of matter which can manifest 
the properties of life. But the cell is anything but 
simple. It consists of many parts acting in adjustment 
to each other. The more it is studied, the more com- 

156 j 


THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION 
eee 


plex it appears. ... It acts, rather, as a machine. It 
must be regarded as a mechanism, and can not be called 
a chemical compound. Its properties are the properties 
of the cell as a mechanism and not of the cell as a 
chemical compound. . . . If we trace variation to ‘or- 
ganic composition,’ it must be to the mechanical rather 
than the chemical composition of this substance. 

‘“The simplest form of living matter that we know 
is found in bacteria; but we are fast learning that even 
these minute bodies have a structure within, and are in 
no sense simple chemical compounds. They, too, are 
mechanisms ; simpler, indeed, than those of higher cells, 
but none the less mechanisms. 

‘“With all our research, the essence and origin of 
life has thus far eluded our grasp. The scientist should 
go no further than the evidence leads him, and should 
not indulge in too much philosophical speculation.’’ 

The above extracts, together with others that follow, 
show that the writer is a cosmic evolutionist, and that 
to account for the origin of living things the evolu- 
tionist must show how they have originated by the 
action of the inorganic forces of nature upon matter. 
In other words, spontaneous generation is part of his 
problem. He shows that to account for this is a hope- 
less task. But, notwithstanding this impassable chasm, 
the author assumes that by the aid of natural forces 
he has passed over it, and he proceeds without hesita- 
tion to erect an assumed scientific evolution upon the 
ethereal foundation of spontaneous generation. When 
he has presented the theories that have been relied 
» upon to explain the method of evolution, it becomes. 
evident that little or no progress has been made in that 
direction. 

157 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


RR 


The steamer, Evolution, headed upstream, fails to 
ascend the first great fall from death into life. Some 
‘‘ynknown power’’ must lift her to the heights above. 
No natural forces without design can do this. Now, we 
imagine that she has been lifted above the fall, and 
that she travels on, with the life of plants as a part of 
her outfit. Erelong she stops in front of another fall 
that she can not ascend. Animals, living organisms that 
possess feeling, are to be in the stream above. The ship, 
Evolution, under a full head of steam, is powerless to 
ascend this fall, and so it is necessary to call in the 
‘“‘ynknown power’’ to lift her into the stream above. 
She now has on board as a part of her outfit plant life, 
animal life and the sense of feeling, by the aid of which 
she hopes to overcome all obstacles that may present 
themselves. 

As to how matter could be made to feel is beyond 
all hope of science to explain. So far as science can 
explain, molecular motion is the only thing she had 
with which to account for the creation of life and sensa- 
tion. Spencer says that there is ‘‘no resemblance be- 
tween a unit of feeling and a unit of motion.”’ 

Darwin says: ‘‘In what manner the mental powers 
were first developed in the lowest organisms is as hope- 
less an inquiry as how life itself first originated.’’ 
These acknowledged impossibilities in the process of 
evolution do not cause the evolutionist to halt for one 
moment in his extravagant theorizing. 

As the ship, Evolution, plods wearily along up- 
stream, she comes to a multitude of falls and cataracts 
in the form of the many instincts of animals. Many 
of these instincts are extremely complex, and would 
have to be evolved simultaneously in order to be of 

158 ; 


THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION 





use—a thing which no theory accounts for. The ship, 
Evolution, is obliged to invoke the ‘‘unknown power’’ 
many times to lift her to the heights where these exist. 
On she goes, propelled by steam, and having as her 
helpers life, feelings of many kinds, special senses and 
instincts. But we are told by the author that ‘‘the 
high development of instinct is incompatible with the 
high development of intelligence, and vice versa.’’ 

On the good ship plies her way, until she comes at 
last to the foot of a cataract thousands of leagues high. 
Up yonder on the infinite heights stands the mind of 
man, a spiritual being who has conscience, self-con- 
sciousness, knows right from wrong, thinks, reasons, 
believes, hopes, loves, worships an unseen Spirit who he 
believes is the Author and Sustainer of the universe— 
this spirit of man dominates the world. The captain 
of the ship looked upward, and is much discouraged as 
he views the heights above. But the ship decides that 
she must make the effort. Instinct is her highest power 
on board, but it lacks quality; only faint glimmerings 
of reason are at hand. The ship, Evolution, assembles 
her forces, and in her mad despair she makes a wild 
plunge, and is dashed into a thousand fragments at the 
foot of the mighty cataract. It would seem that here 
at least the captain of the ship would be ready to admit 
that an all-wise God alone could span the gulf between 
man and brute. But the so-called scientific method of 
evolution absolutely repudiates all evidence of design 
in the action of the forces with which she deals. 

As to natural selection, Professor Conn writes: 
‘“‘But, after all, the greatest strength of the law of 
natural selection has been in the fact it has furnished a 
natural law as a substitute for supernatural intelli- 

11 159 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





gence. In the making of worlds and the forming of 
mountains and valleys, blind force, as studied by the 
astronomer and geologist, appears to be sufficient, for 
here there is no adjustment of part to part for definite | 
ends, such as characterizes machines. In the structure 
of the bodies of animals and plants the case is different. 
Natural force is blind, and can not be supposed to have 
any knowledge of the relation of parts adjusted for 
definite purposes. This seems to imply intelligence, and 
herein lies the difficulty in applying to living phe- 
nomena the same principles of natural law as have been 
successfully used to explain other natural phenomena. 
But natural selection seems to furnish a substitute for 
intelligence. It shows, in other words, how it may be 
assumed that even blind forees can be sufficient to 
adapt parts to each other and construct the complicated 
organs which appear to be such indications of intelli- 
gence. Here, then, is the secret of the great influence 
of natural selection. It replaces a transcendental ex- 
planation by a natural law. To be sure, it does not 
explain force, and this leaves the whole subject shroud- 
ed in as deep fundamental mystery as ever. But science 
does not hope to explain force and power, and will be 
satisfied to account for natural phenomena by the action 
of natural forces acting in accordance with natural 
laws. Natural selection was a great step in this direc- 
tion. 

‘*Natural selection will explain degradation as well 
as advance in structure. In other words, while it is 
always the fittest that survives, the fittest is not always 
the best.’’ 

From the preceding it is evident that the effort of 
evolution is to explain dll things by the action of 

160 


THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION 


LL 


‘“plind force.’’ This, to say the least, forces God into a 
region of dark uncertainty, so that it becomes easy to 
deny His existence. This being true, we need not won- 
der at the prevalent unbelief and practical atheism 
among evolutionists. ‘‘Blind force,’’ acting according 
to ‘‘natural laws,’’ is substituted for ‘‘supernatural in- 
telligence,’’ and this is the great gain (?). 

I have shown in a previous chapter that the so- 
called laws or forces of nature, when controlled by 
mind, produce countless results that could never be 
produced in the inorganic world by ‘‘blind force.’’ The 
fundamental difficulty here is that ‘‘blind forces’’ alone 
necessarily end in determinism. The fatal assumption 
that all forces are ‘‘blind,’’ and that they do every- 
thing, is the foundation of evolution—the basis of natu- 
ralism—and this leaves no place even for human 
miracles. 

Natural selection holds that ‘‘organic variations’’ 
‘tare fortuitous, and while each doubtless has its defi- 
nite causes, they are purely accidental so far as purpose 
is concerned. Such miscellaneous variations do not 
demand an explanation any more than does the shape 
of the fragment of stone.’ 

Conn says: ‘‘Most of Darwin’s evidence was obtained 
from the study of animals and plants under domestica- 
tion.”’? These facts: ‘‘give no direct evidence of the 
method followed in nature. ... There can be no strug- 
gle for existence among animals under domestication,”’ 
and, consequently, natural selection, which grows out of 
this struggle, can not take place under domestication. 
According to this, most of Darwin’s facts are compara- 
tively worthless to prove that natural selection can take 
place in a state of nature. 

161 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





Darwin states his theory as follows: ‘‘Natural selec- 
tion acts solely through the preservation of variations 
in some way advantageous, which consequently endure.’’ 
The ‘‘struggle for existence’’ necessarily follows the 
high rate of increase of organisms in a state of nature. 
It is evident that under domestication there is no place 
for natural selection to act. 

Professor Conn says: ‘‘The word ‘selection’ is here 
misleading. There is in nature no selector and no 
selecting. Nature does not select the best, but simply 
eliminates the worst. ... A character is not simply 
preserved because it is useful, but because it enables 
its possessor to win in the struggle when others without 
the character would fail.’’ 

The failures of natural selection in many places are 
very striking. It. absolutely fails to show how any 
organ can originate. The process can not begin to act 
till organs are sufficiently developed to be useful, and 
this makes it evident that it can not explain the origin 
of any organ. Professor Conn says: ‘‘ Paleontology 
thus far has given us no knowledge of the actual begin- 
ning of organs.’’ But paleontology is practically infi- 
nite in time, compared to the time that most living 
species have existed. It contains nearly the whole 
record. Again he says: ‘‘When we find new organs 
appearing among animals and plants they are simply 
repetitions of parts already existing; 1. ¢., extra legs, 
ete.’’ As to the difficulty of accounting for the begin- 
nings of organs, he says: ‘‘This fact has led some of 
our most thoughtful and observant naturalists to ques- 
tion seriously whether natural selection can be a vera 
causa, while it has convinced others that we can never 
find the explanation of descent by the study of natural 

162 


THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION 





selection, no matter how vigorously we pursue the sub- 
ject, and that the only chance for further progress is 
in the study of variations themselves.’’ ‘ 

The variations of natural selection are haphazard. 
Conn says: “‘Zf variations are definite, then selection 1s 
not the fundamental cause of evolution.’’ After con- 
sidering the origin of certain organs, he says: ‘‘To ex- 
plain the origin of organs it would seem that some sort 
of determinate variation is necessary.’’ This being 
true, natural selection can not be the ‘‘fundamental 
cause’’ of evolution. 

Selection under domestication is built upon single 
variations selected by man, but this can not be true in 
nature. Conn says: ‘‘It is an absolute certainty that 
single variations can not perpetuate themselves if there 
is free possibility of breeding with unmodified members 
of the race, for cross-breeding will soon eliminate them. 
Hence it has been necessary to assume that evolution 
has advanced by variations around a mean, that natural 
selection has simply preserved variations above or below 
a mean, and thus works upon large numbers of indi- 
viduals rather than upon isolated variations.’’ This 
method excludes that under domestication. It also re- 
sults in a uniform type, and fails to produce the neces- 
sary divergence of descent. Conn says: ‘‘If there is 
anything certain in the descent theory, it is that there 
has been a divergence of descent.’’ 

To produce the divergence everywhere manifest, he 
calls to his aid the various kinds of isolation, real and 
imaginary, that may exist. According to this method 
isolation of some kind must have appeared a countless 
number of times to produce the millions of species that 
exist. That this could have happened I can not believe. 

163 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





Here it should be remembered that everywhere there 
exists in nature cross-sterility between closely related 
species, and that natural selection offers no explanation 
as to how this has been brought about. Cross-sterility 
is one of the great problems which any plausible theory 
of evolution fails to solve. But she must solve it, if her 
claims are true. 

As to useless. characters, Conn says: ‘‘Such charac- 
ters can not be explained upon the principle of natural 
selection except by calling in the obscure law of correla- 
tion.’’ Being useless, the theory does not apply. 

Natural selection does not account for the absence 
of intermediate connecting forms, where they ought to 
be expected to be found. Le Conte has emphasized this 
difficulty. There are long stretches in the geological 
record where the rocks are crowded with fossils, but 
without the connecting links. The intermediate forms 
must have vastly exceeded in number the fossils that 
are found, and, at the same time, the conditions for 
preserving them were favorable. Darwin says in sub- 
stance that the known forms of fossils are as nothing 
compared to the forms that must have existed. He ex- 
presses surprise that in strata where fossils are well 
preserved intermediate forms are so few. Romanes 
says that the geological record deserves the name of 
‘a chapter of accidents.’’ He seems disposed to ignore 
the geological record. 

Mr. Darwin did not believe that natural selection 
alone was the only factor in evolution. He believed 
that, to some extent, acquired characters were inherited. 
Lamarck had previously advanced the theory that “‘use 
and disuse, the direct action of food and climate, and 
the influence of effort on the part of the individual’’ 

164 


THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION 





were the factors in evolution—and especially ‘‘use and 
disuse.’’ Conn says of Lamarckism: ‘‘But the question 
has been recently forced to the front whether they are 
real factors at all, and whether they play any part in 
the origin of species. After being recognized and gen- 
erally accepted for nearly a century, they are to-day 
regarded with skepticism. ... The belief in the inherit- 
ance of acquired characters has certainly been losing 
ground in the last ten years, and most naturalists look 
upon this agency as a doubtful one, and one of com- 
paratively little importance, if accepted at all.’’ 

Herbert Spencer claims that unless acquired char- 
acters have been inherited there has been no evolution. 

Another supplement to natural selection is Weis- 
mannism’s germ plasm theory, which was first an- 
nounced in 1883. Conn says of it: ‘‘But the theory of 
Weismann is perhaps the most important addition to 
the discussion of evolution since Darwin.’’ Again: 
‘‘Wifteen years after the death of Darwin, his principle 
ot natural selection had been put upon a new founda- 
tion and raised to a position where Darwin never con- 
ceived of its being placed.’’ 

The essential part of Weismann’s theory is that a 
part of the reproductive material, germ plasm, con- 
tained in the fertilized ovum is passed on to the off- 
spring, unchanged, generation after generation. Weis- 
mann originally held that the germ plasm is contained 
in the reproductive organs only and that it is absolutely 
unchangeable. Both of these claims have been practi- 
cally abandoned. He held that ‘‘it is only the char- 
acter of the germ plasm that determines the inherit- 
ance of the subsequent generations.’’ According to this, 
“acquired characters can not be transmitted to pos- 

165 


- THEISTIC EVOLUTION 
ER 
terity.’’ This theory eliminates Lamarckism. The fact 
that the ovum and spermatozoon are from two different 
individuals allows room for variations. 

But ‘‘Weismannism utterly fails to explain how 
many individuals can vary simultaneously in the same 
direction. Variations always come from the mixtures 
of germ plasms in sexual reproduction, and it is 1mpos- 
sible that the same mixture should occur in the off- 
spring of any two pairs of individuals. We can, there- 
fore, see no feason why congenital variations should 
oceur in many individuals at once in the same direc- 
tion. Thus natural selection would be forced to act 
solely upon the principle of means and averages, a 
principle satisfactory enough in explaining the develop- 
ment of organs in size and efficiency, but in other 
places, especially in explaining the beginning of organs,- 
quite inadequate.’’ 

Conn also says: ‘‘Weismannism, while it accounts 
for variation, utterly fails to account for determi- 
nate variation. As we have noticed, our paleontolo- 
cists who have studied evolution over long ages of 
the world’s history have become convinced that vari- 
ations have not been fortuitous, but along certain 
definite lines. Such a conclusion is certainly at vari- 
ance with the theory of Weismann. The origin of 
variations from mixtures of germ plasm offers no oppor- 
tunity for determinate variation. Now it has been 
positively demonstrated that such determinate variation 
is a fact of nature.’? Weismann ‘‘has recognized that 
variations not only seem to appear in different lines, 
but that they appear where needed, two facts utterly at 
variance with the Weismann theory, so far as we have 
considered it up to this point.’’ 

166 


THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION 





Weismann assumed that ‘‘his germ plasm is abso- 
lutely stable; %. e., not itself subject to change under 
the influence of environment.’’ Second, Weismann as- 
sumed that this germ plasm is perpetually continuous. 
If either of these conceptions be abandoned, evidently 
the Weismann theory of evolution must be modified. 
We shall see that both positions have been virtually 

iven up.’’ He also gave up the claim that germ plasm 
is confined exclusively to the reproductive organs. 

Some naturalists hold that ‘‘germ plasm, being the 
most complex of bodies, is said to be also the most 
unstable.’’ 

Weismannism, a supplement to natural selection, 
eould not endure the strain upon it, and so it went to 
pieces, and it was necessary to patch it up before it 
eould do further service. Organic selection was origi- 
nated as a supplement. It is as follows: ‘‘The essence 
of the theory of organic selection is that these acquired 
variations will keep the individuals in harmony with 
their environment and preserve them under new condi- 
tions, until some congenital variation happens to appear 
of a proper adaptive character. The acquired charac- 
ters keep the individuals alive until the proper con- 
genital variations appear, and the new habit actually 
determines what sort of congenital variations shall be 
preserved, and guides the process of evolution.’’ In 
this way the Lamarckian factors are supposed to sup- 
plement natural selection and Weismannism. 

Conn says of this theory: ‘‘At the same time there 
is no doubt that it quite materially alters the earlier 
notions of natural selection and presents that theory 
in quite a different aspect. For it is plain that with 
this idea the guiding force in evolution is no longer 

167 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





simply the natural selection of minute, haphazard varia-_ 
tions, as Darwin supposed, but a combined action of 
the indirect influence of acquired variations and the 
selection of haphazard congenital variations.’’ 

This final theory is a patchwork of Lamarckism, 
Darwinism and Weismannism, all of which have been 
so modified that they can scarcely be recognized. Or- 
ganic evolution is purely theoretical. No facts are 
known on which it can be based. ‘‘The only Lamarck- 
jan factor that is left is that the environment, through 
the acquired characters that it produces, does have an 
important influence in guiding evolution. The Weis- 
mann school is, by its own theory, prevented from re- 
eeiving aid from the Lamarckian factors and forced to 
explain evolution wholly by the selection of variations 
in the germ plasm.’’ 

Professor Conn says: ‘‘At the outset we must notice 
again that in attempting to build up evolution of 
species by known forces the weak point in the chain has 
been variation. That variations exist is patent enough, 
but what causes them is still uncertain. The mixture 
of germ plasms furnishes a cause, but an insufficient 
cause. The effect of changes in the environment may 
furnish a cause, but this is uncertain. Why similar 
variations appear in many individuals at once, why 
they should involve whole groups of organs at the same 
time, why they appear when they were needed, why 
they follow along definite lines for long periods of time 
—all these questions remain unanswered. It is to meet 
some of these difficulties that Weismann has devised a 
new theory.’’. This is the ‘‘General Selection Theory.”’ 
By devising this theory, he admits the inadequacy of 
the theories that precede. Professor Conn says of it: 

168 


THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION 





‘‘Tn considering this theory, we are once more taken 
into the region of pure speculation. It would be hardly 
worth our while to refer to it were it not for the fact 
that it implies a new realm of variation among organ- 
isms, and is in this respect at least suggestive.’’ 
Professor Conn says of Weismann: ‘‘He speaks of 
the flood of objections raised against the theory of 
selection, touching its ability to modify many parts at 
once. He recognizes that the summation of accidental 
variations is insufficient for the transformation of spe- 
cies, admitting that, if each generation should be 
obliged to wait for a chance variation before it could 
advance along a given line, evolution could never get 
anywhere. He sees thus a necessity of finding some- 
thing to account for ‘determinate’ variations. He sees 
that the force of the difficulties is becoming so great as 
to drive some of the younger naturalists to abandon 
natural selection as a causative force, claiming that to 
ask its acceptance demands us to ‘abrogate reason.’ ’’ 
From the above we see a remarkable state of things 
with regard to the causes and methods of evolution. 
Professor Conn states a number of essential things that 
natural selection, aided by Lamarckism and Weismann- 
ism, totally fails to explain. These theories, singly and 
linked together, have been tested and signally failed. 
Weismann recognizes the difficulties and devises the 
‘‘verminal selection theory’’ to meet them. Conn says 
of it: ‘‘In considering this theory, we are once more 
taken into the region of pure speculation.’’ Again, he 
says: ‘‘But the whole subject is too imaginary to give us 
any feeling that we have grasped any new truth with 
the formulation of such a hypothesis. He says: ‘‘It is 
purely imaginary, and adds nothing to knowledge.”’ 
169 


ote 


THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





Thus we see that the theories that have been relied 
on to explain evolution fail entirely to explain certain 
essential facts. Still men talk about the ‘‘science of 
evolution,’’ when the theories that have been relied on 
to explain the process are admitted to be wholly insuffi- 
cient. Professor Conn writes: ‘‘It is that the discussion 
of the methods of evolution, as it has been outlined in 
the preceding chapters, has been almost entirely of a 
theoretical kind. It has been a balancing of theory 
against theory, suggestion against suggestion, hypothe- 
sis against hypothesis. Of course, each theory is based 
upon observed facts. But the amount of hypothesis has 
become greater as the years of discussion have passed, 
until finally, in the last theory of Weismann, it reached 
pure imagination, unverified by fact. 

‘‘There has naturally arisen a deal of dissatisfaction 
among scientists over such fruitless discussion. In 
recent years especially, the younger naturalists have 
abandoned these theoretical matters as offering little 
promise of advance. They have even ceased largely to 
discuss evolution at all, since they take the general 
theory as demonstrated, but think we have as yet in- 
sufficient data to determine the method of the origin 
of species. They are turning more directly to nature, 
to see if observation may not give an answer where 
discussion has failed.’’ 

And so there is no hope of being able to discover 
the method of evolution. There has been no satisfac- 
tory theory offered. Nor can there be a satisfactory 
sclution built upon ‘‘blind force’’ and inorganic matter 
as the only data. Evolutionists have failed so com- 
pletely as to the method of evolution that they have 
practically ceased to consider the subject, and they 

170 


THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION 





accept evolution as a demonstrated fact of science. In 
my opinion, the facts do not justify this conclusion, for 
there are many places in the line where the process of 
evolution is absolutely helpless. 

Professor Conn says of the geological record: ‘‘In 
short, it is not clear that the study of the development 
of animals through the geological ages gives any light 
upon the origin of variations or their relation to en- 
vironment. . . . Paleontologists are studying sequence 
of types and not the origin of variations.’’ It is evi- 
dent that the theories we have considered receive no 
support from geology. 

Natural selection fails to explain the loss of organs 
by disuse—as in the case of blind fishes in caves. Conn 
says: ‘‘This difficulty is met by Weismann with an 
appeal to a new principle, which is essentially the 
result of the withdrawal of the action of natural selec- 
tion.’’ He calls this theory ‘‘panmixia.’’ Thus natural 
selection is given a rest. This is certainly very humane 
treatment of an overworked steed. 

Embryology was formerly regarded by some as the 
most important evidence of evolution, but it has lost its 
standing. Conn says of it: ‘‘But embryology has not 
answered all the questions set for it, and there is a 
tendency at the present time to decry this study as 
delusive. It is beyond question that the results have 
been somewhat disappointing. It was at one time hoped 
that it would disclose with considerable accuracy the 
history of animals, and so completely teach us that his- 
tory, as to give a very thorough knowledge of the laws 
of evolution. But in both respects it has failed to meet 
expectations. As a source of history it has been found 
subject to so many misleading irregularities that, in 

171 


‘ THEISTIC EVOLUTION 





large numbers of cases, the significance of the numer- 
ous conflicting facts can not be demonstrated.’’ Kmbry- 
ology, having been tried, failed. 

Naturalists are beginning to talk about the ‘‘un- 
known factor’’ in evolution. Some will claim it is 
‘‘design.’’ ‘‘The naturalist will, of course, insist that 
the feet ate factor will be found among the natural 
forces.’ 

Conn says: ‘‘Now, one can avai pretend to doubt 
the existence of something corresponding to what has 
been called ‘growth force’... not a force in the sense 
that electricity is a force.’’ 

In conclusion, I may say that ‘‘evolution’’ is at pres- 
ent a monomania with a large number of people; and 
especially with those who have little knowledge of ae 
subject. It is the fad. 

1. It is assumed that evolution is universal in its 
scope. This is only an assumption. 

2. It is assumed that natural forces alone are suffi- 
cient to account for it, and that these forces are 
‘‘blind.’’ This claim excludes design. This assumption 
is unwarranted. We do not know that natural forces 
are the sum of all causative forces. Facts prove design. 

3. It is assumed that these forces act according to 
fixed laws. I have elsewhere shown that the current 
ideas with regard to fixed laws are misleading, espe- 
cially when the laws of nature are dominated by the 
human mind so that countless results are produced that 
cculd not come to pass in the world below mind. It is 
conceived that a supreme mind might not count for less 
in the affairs of earth than the mind of man. 

4. The action of the ‘‘blind forces’’ of nature ends 
in determinism. But the actions of man, a free moral 

172 


THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION 
Se ea id Bat a a COR NS ESE a i cA 
agent, prove that the doctrine of determinism is not 
true. 

Evolution fails all along the line. It fails to account 
for the first living things. The simplest living things 
are not chemical compounds, but cells, which are mech- 
anisms of complex structure, and they do their work as 
mechanisms. Their creation calls for a designer who 
can make a living machine. Evolution fails to account 
for any one of the numerous psychological phenomena 
that appear in the animal kingdom. Her only factors, 
matter and force, fail to account for the dull sensation 
in the lowest animal. They fail to account for the 
many kinds of sensations, for the highly developed 
special senses, for the numerous complex instincts of 
animals, and are imbecile as creators of the human 
mind. 

Evolution has practically abandoned geology and 
embryology as giving any worthy support to the theo- 
ries in vogue. 

Darwinism, Lamarckism and Weismannism, singly 
and combined, have all been declared to be inadequate, 
and they have been supplemented by Weismann’s 
‘‘Germinal Selection Theory,’’ which is declared to be 
“purely imaginary.’’ Method ends in imagination! 

To think of evolution as an ‘‘established science’’ is 
to me an impossibility. I trust that the day will come 
when sanity and sound logic will reign in the scientific 
world. 


173 








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